Zooming in on the redshift problem

Abstract

Scientific inference offers a way to help organize and clarify our thinking about controversial areas of science such as the redshift problem. Scientists typically devote considerable effort to evaluating the probability that data relevant to a controversial area may be due to the “null hypothesis” (i.e. that there is no new phenomenon). However, it is usually not clear whether a small probability for the null hypothesis can be interpreted as a high probability for some other hypothesis, if only for the reason that the alternative hypothesis may not be specified, and it is not clear how strong a case is required to establish the new hypothesis. Thinking about such topics can be clarified by a simple procedure based on the methods of scientific inference. This procedure is referred to as “ZOOM” for “Zero-Order Organizing Model”. This article proposes a ZOOM for the redshift problem, and presents the results of a preliminary trial.