Scientific innovations often struggle to pass through peer review and regularly fail under certain circumstances: In its theoretical aspects, science is believed to progress through criticism and falsification, but where a dominant theoretical framework is established, expert reviewers practically only allow its completeness to be questioned. Falsifications are frequently bypassed by fudge factors. Criticism, even if fatal, can be turned a blind eye. This blocks fundamental scientific progress. An article about cosmology with published reviews highlights this issue. There, a critical evaluation is suppressed despite evident contradictions in the standard approach. As a countermeasure against similar cases, a new open access medium “Well-Founded Extraordinary Science”, with published reviews, is proposed. It aims to promote epistemic progress by challenging established wisdom. It accepts only studies that go against established assumptions, theories or methods and advances innovations or ‘revolutions’ that are well-founded and parsimonious. Reviewers are guided to check each claimed deficiency and innovation, whereby their confirmation bias is bridled. It is acceptable to present criticism without elaborating innovations and innovations without elaborate criticism of the established framework.

The cosmic microwave background radiation is routinely cited as evidence for a hot Big Bang. Its near isotropy harmonizes with the cosmological principle. However, in prototypical Big Bang models, all matter originates from a primeval fireball that also emits the light that is redshifted into these microwaves. Since light escapes from its source faster than matter can move, it would need to return for it to still be visible to material observers, but the universe is considered ‘flat’ and non-reflective. This prevents us from observing the redshifted glow of a primeval fireball. This is concealed by considering the light to expand with the ‘Hubble flow’ while disregarding that it would escape at c. This “relic radiation blunder” reflects the assumption that model universes in General Relativity are filled with a spatially homogeneous fluid. For radiation, this becomes inappropriate when it is no longer scattered. What we actually observe remains unexplained. Moreover, current standard cosmology allows an expanding view into a large pre-existing universe, while for some aspects it assumes the universe to have been smaller before. This creates geometric, i.e., “cosmometric” contradictions such as between the observed source of the cosmic microwaves and the much smaller and closer assumed emitting source of the same. The criticism expressed here goes against the ‘hard core’ of an established research program. Experts in the field normally view these cores as untouchable. This attitude blocks foundational advances in science.

The cosmic microwave background radiation is routinely cited as evidence for a hot Big Bang. Its isotropy harmonizes with the cosmological principle. However, in prototypical Big Bang models, all matter originates from a primeval fireball that also emits the light that is redshifted into these microwaves. Since light escapes from its source faster than matter can move, it would need to return for it to still be visible to material observers, but the universe is considered ‘flat’ and non-reflective. This prevents us from observing the redshifted glow of the primeval fireball. Like its observability, its homogeneity would also be transient. This is concealed by considering the light to expand with the ‘Hubble flow’ while disregarding that it escapes at c. This blunder reflects the practice of treating model universes in General Relativity as filled with a spatially homogeneous fluid. For radiation, this becomes inappropriate when it is no longer scattered. What we actually observe remains unexplained. Moreover, the calculation of line-of-sight distances allows an expanding view into a large pre-existing universe. For other aspects, the universe is assumed to have been smaller before. This creates contradictions such as between the observed source of the cosmic microwaves and their much smaller and closer assumed emitting source. The criticism expressed here goes against the ‘hard core’ of an established research program. Those cores are treated as inviolable, which blocks fundamental progress. Such blockage can persist for generations even if the theory that is promulgated as the best we have is actually irrational.

The cosmic microwave background radiation is routinely cited as evidence for a hot Big Bang. Its near isotropy harmonizes with the cosmological principle. However, in prototypical Big Bang models, all matter originates from a primeval fireball that also emits the light that is redshifted into these microwaves. Since light escapes from its source faster than matter can move, it would need to return for it to still be visible to material observers, but the universe is considered ‘flat’ and non-reflective. This prevents us from observing the redshifted glow of a primeval fireball. This is concealed by considering the light to expand with the ‘Hubble flow’ while disregarding that it would escape at c. This “relic radiation blunder” reflects the assumption that model universes in General Relativity are filled with a spatially homogeneous fluid. For radiation, this becomes inappropriate when it is no longer scattered. What we actually observe remains unexplained. Moreover, current standard cosmology allows an expanding view into a large pre-existing universe, while for some aspects it assumes the universe to have been smaller before. This creates geometric, i.e., “cosmometric” contradictions such as between the observed source of the cosmic microwaves and the much smaller and closer assumed emitting source of the same. The criticism expressed here goes against the ‘hard core’ of an established research program. Experts in the field normally view these cores as untouchable. This attitude blocks foundational advances in science.

First, this paper broaches the definition of science and the epistemic yield of tenets and approaches: phenomenological (descriptive only), well founded (solid first principles, conducive to deep understanding), provisional (falsifiable if universal, verifiable if existential), and imaginary (fictitious entities or processes, conducive to empirically unsupported beliefs). The Big Bang paradigm and the ΛCDM `concordance model' involve such beliefs: the emanation of the universe out of a non-physical stage, cosmic inflation (hardly testable), Λ (fictitious energy), and `exotic' dark matter. They fail in the confidence check that empirical science requires. They also face a problem in delimiting what expands from what does not. In the more well-founded cosmology that emerges, energy is conserved, the universe is persistent (not transient), and the `perfect cosmological principle' holds. Waves and other field perturbations that propagate at c (the escape velocity of the universe) expand exponentially with distance. This results from gravitation. The galaxy web does not expand. Potential Φ varies as -H/(cz) instead of -1/r. Inertial forces reflect gradients present in comoving frames of accelerated bodies (interaction with the rest of the universe - not with space). They are increased where the universe appears blue-shifted and decreased more than proportionately at very low accelerations. A cut-off acceleration a₀ = 0.168 cH is deduced. This explains the successful description of galaxy rotation curves by "Modified Newtonian Dynamics". A fully elaborated physical theory is still pending. The recycling of energy via a cosmic ocean filled with photons (the cosmic microwave background), neutrinos and gravitons, and the wider implications for science are briefly discussed.

Early physical cosmologies were based on interpretations of the cosmic redshift for which there was insufficient evidence and on theories of gravitation that appear to be falsified by galactic dynamics. Eventually, the big bang paradigm came to be guarded against refutation by ad hoc hypotheses (dark matter, cosmic inflation, dark energy) and free parameters. Presently available data allow a more satisfactory phenomenological approach. Using data on magnitude and redshift from 892 type Ia supernovae, it is first shown that these suggest that the redshift factor (1+z) is simply an exponential function of distance and that, for standard candles, magnitude m=5log[(1+z)ln(1+z)]+const. While these functions are incompatible with a big bang, they characterize certain tired light models as well as exponential expansion models. However, the former are falsified by the stretched light curves of distant supernovae and the latter by the absence of a predicted 1+z increase in the angular sizes of galaxies. Instead, the observations suggest that physical processes speed up and objects contract uniformly as an exponential function of time, standards of measurement not excluded, and only free waves being excepted. Distant events proceed, then, more slowly, while angular sizes remain unaffected, approximately as observed. Since all objects contract in proportion, the Universe retains a static appearance. A corresponding physical theory, which should also explain galactic dynamics, remains yet to be derived from first principles. A way to do this, satisfying also Mach's principle, is vaguely suggested.

The influence of various general and stimulus-specific factors on the contribution of vision to heard roundedness was investigated by means of web experiments conducted in Swedish. The original utterances consisted of the syllables /ɡyːɡ/ and /ɡeːɡ/ of a male and a female speaker. They were synchronized with each other in all combinations, resulting in four stimuli that were incongruent in vowel quality, two of them additionally in speaker sex. One of the experiments was also conducted in Turkish, using the same stimuli. The results showed that visible presence of lip rounding has a weaker effect on audition than its absence, except for conditions that evoke increased attention, such as when a foreign language is involved. The results suggest that female listeners are more susceptible to vision under such conditions. There was no significant effect of age and of discomfort felt by being exposed to dubbed speech. A discrepancy in speaker sex did not lead to reduced influence of vision. The results also showed that habituation to dubbed speech has no deteriorating effect on normal auditory-visual integration in the case of roundedness.