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If you're tired of hearing about 'Intelligent design' creationists and the court wars against Darwin's theory in the U.S., you might be surprised to learn that another pillar of modern science, Einstein and his Theory of Relativity, is under attack.

A burgeoning underground of 'dissident' scientists and self-described experts publish their theories in newsletters and blogs on the Net, exchanging ideas in a great battle against 'the temple of relativity'. According to these critics, relativity is not only wrong, it's an affront to common sense, and its creator, Albert Einstein, was no less than a cheat.

A quick glance at anti-relativity proponents and their publications reveals a plethora of alternative theories about how the universe really works – very few of them in agreement with each other. But despite their many differences, common themes among these self-described iconoclasts do emerge: resentment of academic 'elites', suspicion of the entire peer-review process in mainstream scientific journals and a deep-seated paranoia about the extent of government involvement in scientific projects.

An aethro-kinematics website (www.aethro-kinematics.com) claims to refute relativity by resurrecting René Descartes' theory that the Earth and all the planets are carried around the Sun by an "Aether vortex". Another site points to the work of one Stefan Marinov, a self-described dissident, who apparently threatened to immolate himself in front of the British Embassy in Vienna, Austria, because he was so incensed by the refusal of the respected journal Nature to publish his 'proofs' against relativity.

This is just a taste. A visit to Google reveals the extent of the phenomenon. Is this a new front in the war on science? Can we expect a new Discovery Institute, armed with millions of dollars from eccentric fundamentalists, spoiling for a rematch in school boards across the U.S. — this time attacking Einstein and not Darwin?

Hopefully not, according to Bryan Gaensler, a professor of physics at the University of Sydney. "The anti-relativity cranks are not nearly as well-organised as the creationists. Probably none of them would get along well enough to form a serious threat to science."

Having said that, he adds, "there has just begun a new series of conferences, held by anti-relativity cranks, called 'Crisis in Cosmology'. I think the first one was held in Spain and they're planning another. It looks exactly like a legitimate scientific conference, with the difference that everyone delivering a talk there is insane."

The conference planners sent out invitations to Gaensler and hundreds of other physicists. "Before registering," he says, "you had to fill out this 10-point, bulleted manifesto, agreeing to all sorts of propositions from the start. For example, 'I do not accept that the universe is expanding', and so on, the kind of thing you would never see at a real scientific conference. It was hilarious."

The anti-relativity movement got underway as soon as Einstein's first paper on special relativity was published, in 1905. Some scientists disputed its assertion that the old Newtonian concepts of absolute space and time — which had never been scientifically established — were superfluous. Indeed, the attempt to restore these concepts to mainstream physics has been the essential foundation of almost every crank theory since.

Even more enraging to some scientists and engineers was the worldwide fame Einstein attained with the 1916 publication of his General Theory of Relativity, which extended special relativity and offered a radically new explanation for gravity.

A number of Germans, many of them anti-Semites, despised Einstein's socialist views and envied his fame. Outside Germany, however, Einstein's theory also met resistance. Albert Michelson, famous as the American who devised the failed Michelson-Morley experiment to detect aether, the invisible medium that 19th century scientists supposed responsible for the propagation of light waves through space, never accepted relativity and he politely admitted this to Einstein when they met.

Like many physicists and astronomers, Gaensler routinely hears from individuals claiming to have proven Einstein's theory false. "I have a boxload of material from cranks," he says, "but currently it's in storage aboard a ship somewhere between the U.S. and Sydney." A native Australian, Gaensler has just completed an eight-year stint in Boston, teaching at Harvard University and conducting research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.

"But there is a pattern," he says. "They're always male — never female. Normally professionals of some kind, doctors, pilots, engineers. And they're always retired and have years to spend on their pet theory.

"Whenever the observatory sends out a press release, they read it and send out mass-mailings to every scientist listed as having anything to do with the event."

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