Something is wrong in the state of QED...?

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In summary, the conversation revolves around a paper by Oliver Consa that questions the accuracy of the theory of Quantum electrodynamics (QED) and its use of renormalization. The author's claims are met with skepticism by experts, who point out flaws in his arguments and his lack of mainstream support. The conversation also touches on the history of QED and its precision in predicting experimental values, particularly the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron.
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haushofer
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Asking an opinion about the author's claim that QED was put into agreement with measurements in a suspicious way.
Dear all,

recently I came across this paper by one Oliver Consa,

https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.02078

The recap is

Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is considered the most accurate theory in the history of science. However, this precision is based on a single experimental value: the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron (g-factor). An examination of the history of QED reveals that this value was obtained in a very suspicious way. These suspicions include the case of Karplus & Kroll, who admitted to having lied in their presentation of the most relevant calculation in the history of QED. As we will demonstrate in this paper, the Karplus & Kroll affair was not an isolated case, but one in a long series of errors, suspicious coincidences, mathematical inconsistencies and renormalized infinities swept under the rug.

I'm curious whether experts think this is historically right. To me it seems that the author is mainly rephrasing critical sounds from the past regarding renormalization, before the advent of Wilson's effective field theory paradigm. His claim that renormalization is applied "arbitrarily" seems flat out wrong. Also, his treatment of the regularization used in e.g. the Casimir force is a bit dubious. But the mentioning of the calculated Feynman diagrams being in agreement with incorrect experimental values seems rather interesting. Does this author have a point?
 
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There are other QED observables that has been measured with extremely high precision.

Author has basically the same paper, but uploaded 2010 on the ArXiV too...
 
  • #3
haushofer said:
TL;DR Summary: Asking an opinion about the author's claim that QED was put into agreement with measurements in a suspicious way.

Dear all,

recently I came across this paper by one Oliver Consa,

https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.02078

The recap is
I'm curious whether experts think this is historically right. To me it seems that the author is mainly rephrasing critical sounds from the past regarding renormalization, before the advent of Wilson's effective field theory paradigm. His claim that renormalization is applied "arbitrarily" seems flat out wrong. Also, his treatment of the regularization used in e.g. the Casimir force is a bit dubious. But the mentioning of the calculated Feynman diagrams being in agreement with incorrect experimental values seems rather interesting. Does this author have a point?
The author is definitely not in the world of mainstream physics. We will not discuss his work at PF.
 
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