Hate to burst your bubble, but this guy Oyibo is what we call a crackpot. My group gets a stack of unpublishable, meaningless, incoherent, chrisdefendorf style papers every week from dudes who claim to have a "Grand Unified Theory" or a "Theory of Everything." They're full of words, and "ideas" about where Einstein "went wrong," but there is rarely any mathematics and never any logic.

I took your advice and looked into his background, just for fun. If he'd ever published anything related to fundamental physics, I would have seen it. I study quantum gravity and other quantum field theories. It's my job and I spend a LOT of time going through all the reputable journals. But I'd never heard of Dr. Oyibo until you mentioned him.

It turns out he's an interesting kind of crackpot, one with a PhD. His PhD, however, is not in any branch of fundamental physics, but rather in fluid dynamics (a very important and interesting field of study, but far afield from issues of fundamental structure). But despite this PhD, and whatever work he has actually done in his own field (and I don't doubt that there could be some), we must still refer to him as Dr. Oyibo, and not as Professor Oyibo. He has not gained tenure. Pretty surprising for a guy who understands the deepest mysteries of the physical universe.

He claims to have been nominated twice for Nobel Prizes, yet he appears to have published only ten distinct papers. That's a pretty strong batting record! He claims to have found a general solution to the Navier-Stokes equations, one of the great outstanding problems in all of mathematics, yet he has not published his solution, even if only to claim the million-dollar prize being offered by the Clay Mathematical Institute.

He claims to have a "Theory of Everything," and the one university in the world which gives him the benefit of the doubt, and invites him to talk about it publicly, is rebuked. He responds with something of the nature "I don't have to prove my theory, you need to disprove it." First of all, physical theories cannot be "proven" or "disproven." The words are not even used by serious physicists. Theories are either supported, or refuted, by experimental evidence. In the end, that's all we have, and that fact defines physics. There is always some degree of experimental uncertainty, and thus never any proof in the logical sense.

But even if we excuse his untidy language, the fact that he is unwilling to duscuss his GAGUT openly in an academic setting is a huge sign that even he knows that his "ideas" are bullshit. Most crackpots search out the academic conferences (at least, those which don't require any scientific credentials) in order to spread their "ideas" and finally become famous. But he, being the rare crackpot who actually knows some science, understands that he has absolutely nothing to support his claims.


Look, I'm not here to attack Oyibo, and certainly not to attack you. I just want to advertise a fact which is often misunderstood by the world at large. There is no idea so stupid that a scientist (by some definition) can not be found to support it. The statements of any particular scientist should usually be taken with a bit of skepticism, especially if he claims them to be new and profound, and even more so if his only credential is a PhD.

Noone's gonna prove that there is a God, and noone's gonna prove that there isn't one. That's what makes God God.