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JoshuaZ comments on Some Heuristics for Evaluating the Soundness of the Academic Mainstream in Unfamiliar Fields - Less Wrong
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1) It is plausible that an element of affirmative action could have crept into the awarding of the Fields Medal. It is not unreasonable to suspect that it has. Any number of biases might creep in to the awarding of a prize, however major it is. For example, it could well be that a disproportionate number of Norwegians or Swedes have won the Nobel relative to their accomplishments, because of location.
2) That the mathematics of relativity (either special or general) "allows no exceptions" is trivial but as far as I can see true, because it is true of any mathematical system that exceptions to the system are, pretty much by definition, not included inside the system. Anything inside the system itself is not an exception to it. So, trivial. But not false. What we really need to to do is to see why the point is brought up.
Looking further into the matter of "exceptions", to see why he brought up the true but trivial point with respect to relativity, in the main article I found this:
He appears to be saying that relativity breaks down at the Big Bang. He doesn't appear to provide any ground for making this claim, but it seems likely. Wikipedia says something similar in its article on black holes:
The big bang is a singularity, and in that respect is similar to black holes, so if general relativity breaks down completely in a black hole then I would imagine it would also be likely to break down completely at the Big Bang.
3) That people have often speciously used Einstein's relativity as a metaphor to promote all sorts of relativism is well known. People have similarly speciously used QM to promote all sorts of nonsense. So that particular point is hardly controversial, I think.
I have never relied on Conservapedia and don't intend to start whereas I use Wikipedia several times a day, but these particular attacks on the Conservapedia seem weak.
Sure. In the case of the Nobel prizes this claim has been made before. In particular, the claim is frequently made that the Nobel Prize in literature has favored northern Europeans and has had serious political overtones. There's a strong argument that the committee has generally been unwilling to award the prize to people with extreme right-wing politics while being fine with rewarding them to those on the extreme left. Moreover, you have cases like Eyvind Johnson who got the prize despite being on the committee itself and being not well known outside Sweden. (I'm not sure if any of his major works had even been translated into English or French when he got the prize.) And every few years there's a minor row when someone on the lit committee decides to bash US literature in general, connecting it to broad criticism of the US and its culture (see for example this).
There's also no question that politics has played heavy roles in the awarding of the Peace Prize.
And in the sciences there has been serious allegations of sexism in the awarding of the prizes. The best source for this as far as I'm aware is "The Madame Curie Complex" by Julie Des Jardins (unfortunately it isn't terribly well-written, at times exaggerates accomplishments of some individuals, sees patterns where they may not exist, and suffers from other problems.)
But, saying "it isn't unreasonable to suspect X" is different from asserting X without any evidence.
Isn't this a bit like saying "politics has played a heavy role in electing the President of the United States?" The Peace Prize is a political award.
True, but this appears to be from a more free-wheeling, conservative-pundit blog-like section of the 'pedia, rather than from its articles. I think that once it's understood that this section is a highly opinionated blog, the particular assertion seems to fit comfortably. For instance, right now, one of the entries reads:
Socialist England! Not enough to say "England".
The "Socialist England" article is from the news section, and does not have an article on Conservapedia. It links to a Reuters article. It's also nowhere near as dire as the Conservapedia headline makes it out to be.
The relativity article, and the other main articles linked on the main page, are clearly standard articles and not intended to be viewed as simple opinion blogs. It has no attribution, and lists eighteen references in the exact same manner as a Wikipedia article.
At best it is misguided, at worst it is intended to intentionally misinform people about the theory.
At the end of the article counterexamples to evolution, an old earth, and the Bible are linked to, with exactly the same format (and worse mischaracterizations than the Relativity article).
Random articles of more innocuous subjects (like book) have exactly the same format.
Again, it's clearly the meat of the website, as more mundane articles do no more than go out of their way to add a mention of the Bible or Jesus in some way.