I’ve been reluctant to blog about this, because I’m always wary of providing cheap publicity to quacks such as Walter L. Wagner. A number of my online penpals, however, have done tons of research to expose him as nothing but a lunatic. I suppose every link counts in cementing lead positions for appropriate posts in Google rankings, so I figured spreading the word in this case considerably outweighs other considerations.
In case the name rings a bell – and especially if it does not – here is the briefest of summaries.
Mr Wagner is a self-professed “scientist” who filed a suit in a US court to stop CERN from launching the LHC on the grounds that the experiments it is supposed to run will create miniature black holes that will eventually devour Earth. The lawsuit has been duly dismissed, but the frenzy whipped up by Wagner and his ilk has produced a number of deplorable by-products such as death threats to CERN scientists.
One of the members of the UCF, an online community to which I belong, Janiece, has nominated Wagner for her regular “‘Tard of the Week” award. Then another member of our club, John, a physical chemist by trade, started exploring Wagner’s so-called credentials. Mr Wagner himself – plus a couple of his no less delusional friends – decided to defend his claims to scientific prowess on John’s blog, using his supposed mastery of chess and his erstwhile passage with flying colors of a basic primary education teaching qualifications exam, among other things. Their evasive and obfuscating rambles raised the ire of a number of UCFers, so not only John wrote another piece dissecting Wagner’s delusions, but Jim wrote a powerful essay on Wagner’s insanity, MWT summarized absurdity of Wagner’s claims and Eric, with his trained legal eye, exposed in detail that Wagner’s key claims do not pass muster.
If you don’t want to wade through all of that material, let me give you another brief summary: Mr Wagner is not qualified by any stretch of imagination to call himself a “Dr”, a physicist, or even a generic “scientist”. He is a lunatic who believes that he understands nuclear physics better than practically anyone in the world, and he uses a lot of misinformation to present himself as an accepted authority in the field, so that his delusions can be taken seriously by the public.
If you don’t trust my word – or want to learn for yourself – then, by all means, please, click on the links in this post.
My friends in the UCF do a really good job in calling Wagner’s BS. I feel awesome in being associated with them.