Comment by Frost1x
4 days ago
I would argue that theory is a critical part of the research process and is therefore research.
There’s of course a line between simply coming up with ideas that are quickly provably wrong or inconsistent vs generating ideas that are consistent and not quickly falsified. It’s especially valuable the ideas are falsifiable and it seems like this is the case here.
As such, theory finds patterns in existing knowns, makes some leaps and tries to connect them. Then empirical evidence can help solidify or falsify those ideas. But we tend not to just connect dots of empirical data without attempting to know the casual relationship, otherwise the connections can be rather nonsensical or may have weak predictive power.
With all that said I didn’t read the paper in detail nor am I qualified in this domain to say if it’s quackery or a reasonable shot a developing some new theory. It is peer reviewed and published in APS so I suspect it’s not complete quackery: https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.1...
A research paper makes use of multiple sources of known provenance and various degrees of authority and relevance. It tries to establish a consensus of knowledge, as close to fact as possible. The phrase "research suggests" is an appeal to authority that implies some kind of academic rigor. A theory paper, which is still useful and important, can be published without any kind of authority. You can just make things up.