For new readers and those who request to be “好友 good friends” ,  please read my 公告栏 first.

My last post, http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=1565&do=blog&id=955655, about the confirmation ofEinstein’s prediction of gravity waves was posted in almost real time before it was generally broadcasted in the news media worldwide. The article immediately elicited several comments  from non-believers of Relativity Theory in China. In fact, one comment which  was later deleted by the author berated me for reporting something that “even  elementary  school  students know to be wrong, i.e.,  the theory of relativity”. Later on I was enlighten by my friends

that actually there  are a group of people in China who do not believe the theory of relativity and  think the whole thing is a scientific hoax foisted onthe public. I was told to ignore such  comments.

On the other hand, there are plenty of conspiracies and hoaxes in this world.  Some are real and others imagined. To this day, there are credible politicians  who believe that “climate change” is a scientific hoax and JFK was murdered by  the CIA. But what Edward Snowden revealed about government monitoring  phone calls and e-mails are real.  Thus, coincidentally the US National Public Radio hosting a program last night with the title “How many people does it take to keep a conspiracy alive?”  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/math-formula-charts-the-lifespan-of-hoaxes/  . This is certainly an interesting question. Oxford University  physicist and cancer biologist David Robert Grimes, who is also a journalist,  has published a new mathematical equation in the journal PLOS ONE that estimates how  long a large-scale conspiracy can last before someone behind the scenes  intentionally or unintentionally reveals the truth. Intuitively, this certainly make sense.If too many people are involved, then the sooner the truth will slip out. “Large conspiracies tend to fail, and if you need large numbers of scientists to conspire, that’s incredibly unlikely to be tenable,”  the authors said. So the question to ask yourself isn’t ‘Do conspiracies happen?’  but rather what’s the likelihood that scientists en masse would be complicit in a conspiracy?  Without going into details, one number is relevant here regarding the truth of the theory of relativity – at most 124 people can be involved for a scientific hoax to remain unexposed for one hundred years according to the authors. Thus here is a non-theoretical common sense proof that Einstein’s theory of relativity is correct. Think about the number of people involved in the manufacturing of modern GPS position locator which require relativistic corrective computation everyday for the accuracy of the GPS to be kept within feet (without this correction a GPS locator can be in error by several miles per day)  http://xueshu.baidu.com/s?wd=paperuri:(ca86bb83fe3f3c3f3b68bed1d83adc08)&filter=sc_long_sign&sc_ks_para=q%3DRelativity+correction+in+GPS+user+equipment&tn=SE_baiduxueshu_c1gjeupa&ie=utf-8. If Einstein’s theory is a hoax, then it would be exposed quickly never mind the many other independent experimental verification over the years.

Note added 2/19/2016: May be it is my use of the English language, it seems many of the comments on  these two articles of mine are from
1. people who misunderstood the purpose and reasoning behind my article and the article I referenced
2. people who have entirely different purpose and subject in mind
3. people who did not even bother to read my articles and are commenting purely based on the title of my articles
The editorial department has already deleted several of the more ridiculous comments. And I have stated many times in the past nine years that I have no desire to start an endless argument with anyone. Thus, from this point on I shall not  respond anymore to improper comments on this article.