In which the Indy abandons the scientific method

Einstein's theory is proved – and it is bad news if you own a penthouse
Scientists use atomic clocks to show that time moves faster at altitude, even on Earth
By Steve Connor, Science Editor (src)

If I were Steve Connor, I would find out who wrote that headline and… well, let's say they wouldn't be associating my name with any dubious headlines again.

For Einstein's theory is not and can never be proven. Ever. At all. In any way. It's a scientific theory, and as such the best we can say is that Einsteinian relativity has passed another test. (I now get to say this with my magic PhD-in-Theoretical-Physics hat on.) Perhaps you could get away, through journalistic licence, with saying that it has been affirmed: that is, another experiment's results are consistent with the theory. But never that it has been proved. In any case, we're quite certain that general relativity isn't quite right somewhere, so proving it true when in fact it's not quite right would be a bit of a sticky point.

And these experiments are old hat. We've been doing them with aeroplanes and even mountaintops for ages, and GPS has relativistic corrections built into its calculations. If Connor wants a really fun story, he could tell a nation agog how their sat-navs 'prove' Einstein was right.

The Independent has form on this. They did it a while ago with climate change: 'Now we know climate change is true' ran the headline, and the subheadline used the word 'proved'. Whoever thinks that scientists 'prove' anything needs a refresher, if not a first course, in the scientific method, and is thus an anonymously-inducted Journalidiot.