Rezn,

If, as you say, this paper is laughable, it should not take much of your time to point to some obvious flaw. Are you asking us lesser intellects to simply accept your word that this is so -- without your saying why, or who you are?

Rezn,

I don't see anything wrong with this paper. Can you show there is? It's easy to post denigrating comments with no substance, while hiding behind anonymity. Do you think that contributes to scientific discourse?

WHOISME, WuBo,

Again, I don't know who Gerhard Forst was, nor who you are. Why not identify yourselves, if you are not Lorenzo Iorio?

I don't know who the author of the Forst paper was. In explaining their decision to withdraw the paper, ArXiv noted the name was "a pseudonym of a physicist based in Italy." This presentation by Ignazio Ciufolini, which I found later, might be relevant:



http://agenda.infn.it/getFile.py/access?contribId=33&resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=695



Forst's paper is cited against Gravity Probe B, although it only existed a short time on ArXiv, and its author was unknown in the field. If "Forst" was actually someone in Ciufolini's group, he did a very convincing impersonation of another Italian physicist, Lorenzo Iorio -- who seems to like pseudonyms too. Who else would write the preceding comment?

This a message I've sent to the ArXiv moderator about this paper:

Dear arXiv-moderation,

This concerns the authorship of http://arxiv.org/abs/0712.3934 , "A critical analysis of the GP-B mission. I: on the impossibility of a reliable measurement of the gravitomagnetic precession of the GP-B gyroscopes." This paper may represent an anonymous attack.

The author's name is given as "Gerhard Forst," with the email address g.forst@yahoo.com . He has no prior ArXiv papers, and seems to have no peer-reviewed publications. His affiliation and address are given as:

G. Forst
FGP
Behrenstr. 1
10117 Berlin

Whatever FGP stands for, there is no mention on the web of such an organization at the given address. Was this paper endorsed? If so, can the endorser show "Gerhard Forst" is the author's real name?

There is an interesting similarity to papers by another author, who has a history of tit-for-tat disputes on ArXiv:

"On the impossibility of measuring a galvano-gravitomagnetic effect with current carrying semiconductors in a space-based experiment," http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0308053

"On the impossibility of using the longitude of the ascending node of GP-B for measuring the Lense-Thirring effect," http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0404107

"On the impossibility of using certain existing spacecraft for the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect in the terrestrial gravitational field," http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0508012

"On the impossibility of measuring the general relativistic part of the terrestrial acceleration of gravity with superconducting gravimeters, http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0602005

"On some critical issues of the LAGEOS/LAGEOS II Lense-Thirring experiment," http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.1022

In addition to the titles, there are many other similarities. Comparing the most recent of these to the paper in question, there are these sequences:

"...no other tests performed by independent teams, without connections with Ciufolini and coworkers...have been so far reported in literature."

"...no independent team, without connections with the GP-B team, will be able to repeat the GP-B data analysis..."

In the former there are 4 sentences beginning with the word "Indeed." Such a sentence is also found in the latter. I could list further examples.

That author has himself claimed increasingly accurate measurements of the Lense-Thirring effect, which I've discussed here:

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0701653

Both those claimed measurements and his reputation would be seriously threatened by a contrary result from Gravity Probe B. I hope the reasons are clear from my paper.

Best regards,

Kris Krogh