What is your level of expertise, for you to pass such a judgment?
They say "watching" as if to imply the science is harder that it is. It implies someone peering through a telescope. "Detecting" would be a better verb.
I think "watching" is a perfectly good description. In fact, this science is much "harder" than someone peering through the eyepiece of an optical telescope, as the time resolution and sensitivity of a radio telescope are much finer.
"Thermonuclear explosions on their surfaces"? The pulsars are thermonuclear reactions themselves.
That makes no sense.
"The blasts last only a few seconds"? But the "flicker" is detected at 600 or so times a second? What correlation is there to the detected pulse and a determination that it is the rotation?
Suppose you were watching the Earth--yes, "watching", with a radio telescope--from a distant star. Suppose you were looking in a frequency band where there was a particularly powerful radio station. The station isn't always on; for some reason, it only operates for a few weeks at a time, at odd intervals. Over the years, you'd see the signal go on and off. Superimposed over this signal, you'd see the signal go up and down with a period of 24 hours. This "flicker" is caused by the rotation of the Earth: when the transmitter is on the far side of the Earth, it's harder to hear than when it's pointing at you. In the periods when the blast of radio waves is being sent out, you can measure the rotation of the Earth.
It's the same thing with the pulsar. There aren't any radio stations on the surface--so far as we know!--but clumps of matter falling onto the surface of the star (causing huge explosions as they land) serve the same purpose. The radio signals from these explosions, lasting several seconds each, go up and down from the rotation of the star.
So where's the observational data for that?
Although indirect, the measurements from the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar verify the gravitational radiation predictions of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to many decimal places. This research was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1993. The theory dates to 1915, and has withstood many experimental tests since.
This guy's been watching too many Star Trek shows.
As you say, but Barry Barish is also a world-class physicist, and what he says in this case is correct.
Suppose you are on a distant planet "watching" earth with a radio telescope. You just happened to be tuned to the frequency that the International Space Station transmits a spot beam down to Houston on. You don't see it when it is pointed away from you towards earth, nor do you see it when the earth blocks the signal. In fact, you see it only for a moment as it transits around the limb of earth just before it is blocked by the earth itself. You also see it as it reappears around the other limb before it points away again. Since the ISS orbits about once every 90 minutes, you see the signal twice in each orbit or about once every 45 minutes. You of course, know nothing about the ISS nor the fact that it is in orbit so you assume the observed signal is attached to the surface of the object being observed -- earth in this case. Would you conclude that the earth rotates once every 45 minutes or 32 times a day based on your observations? If so, you would be wrong.
What data fixes the observed thermonuclear "flicker" to the pulsar's surface? Are you sure the gasses being compressed into a thermonuclear explosion aren't "in orbit" around the pulsar as they spiral down towards the pulsar's surface?