The authors of these statements are :

Tom Van Flandern,
André Koch Torres Assis,
Marcos Cesar Danhoni Neves,
Eric J. Lerner,
Paul Ballard,
Halton Arp,
Cocke W.J.,
Devito C.L Pitucco ,
G. Burbidge ,
W.M. Napier,
M.B. Bell,
S.P. Comeau,
W.G.Tifft,
Barry Setterfield,
Allan Sandage,
Sten Odenwald ,
Rick Fienberg ,
Mark Stewart,

They write...

"Astronomers traditionally have interpreted the redshift as a Doppler shift induced as the galaxies recede from us within an expanding universe.

Around 1929, Hubble noted that the more distant the galaxy was, the greater was the value of the redshift, z. Thus was born the redshift/distance relationship. It came to be accepted as a working hypothesis that z might be a kind of Doppler shift of light because of universal expansion. The terms 'recession velocity' and 'expansion velocity' were quickly brought into service by astronomers at the telescope, and by popularizers, to describe the physical basis for the redshift. Since its discovery nearly 65 years ago, the cosmological redshift has endured as one of the most persuasive 'proofs' that our universe is expanding.

In a letter by Hubble to the Dutch cosmologist Willem De Sitter in 1931, he stated his concerns about these velocities by saying "... we use the term 'apparent velocities' in order to emphasize the empirical feature of the correlation. The interpretation, we feel, should be left to you and the very few others who are competent to discuss the matter with authority." In other words, accepting z as a pure number was one thing; expressing it as a measure of universal expansion was something else.

"...Hubble concluded that his observed log N(m) distribution showed a large departure from Euclidean geometry, provided that the effect of redshifts on the apparent magnitudes was calculated as if the redshifts were due to a real expansion. A different correction is required if no motion exists, the redshifts then being due to an unknown cause. Hubble believed that his count data gave a more reasonable result concerning spatial curvature if the redshift correction was made assuming no recession.

William G. Tifft, University of Arizona noticed a curious and unexpected relationship between a galaxy's morphological classification (Hubble type), brightness, and red shift. The galaxies in the Coma Cluster, for example, seemed to arrange themselves along sloping bands in a redshift v.s. brightness diagram.

Modern cosmology presumes to understand the cosmic redshift as a simple continuous Doppler-like effect caused by expansion of the Universe. In fact there is considerable evidence indicating that the redshift consists of, or is dominated by, an unexplained effect intrinsic to galaxies and quasars. By far the most intriguing result of these initial studies was the suggestion that galaxy redshifts take on preferred or "quantized" values. These discoveries led to the suspicion that a galaxy's redshift may not be related to its Hubble velocity alone. If the redshift is entirely or partially non-Doppler (that is, not due to cosmic expansion), then it could be an intrinsic property of a galaxy, as basic a characteristic as its mass or luminosity.

In the early 1990’s Bruce Guthrie and William Napier of Edinburgh Observatory specifically set out to disprove (Tifft's observation of) redshift quantisation using the best enlarged example of accurate hydrogen line redshifts. Instead of disproving the z quantisation proposal, Guthrie and Napier ended up in confirming it.

By global redshift quantization we mean that the redshifts of homogeneous classes of galaxies from all over the sky contain specific periods when viewed from an appropriate rest frame;

the redshift is not a continuous variable as expected from the standard doppler interpretation..."

We find that even when many more objects are included in the sample there is still clear evidence that the same quantized intrinsic redshifts are present and superimposed on the Hubble flow.

Claims that ordinary spiral galaxies and some classes of QSO show periodicity in their redshift distributions are investigated using recent high-precision data and rigorous statistical procedures. The claims are broadly upheld. The periodicites are strong and easily seen by eye in the datasets. Observational, reduction or statistical artefacts do not seem capable of accounting for them.

According to Halton Arp, observations began to accumulate from 1966 that could not be accounted for by this conventional explanation of the redshift effect. Some extra-galactic objects had to have redshifts which were not caused by a recesson velocity.

The first quasar was discovered by Allan Sandage and Thomas Matthews, an optical and a radio astronomer working in collaboration, in 1963. Then, to great surprise, Martin Schmidt found that the initially puzzling lines were those of familiar elements but shifted far to the right. Why, when the highest redshifted galaxies had a maximum redshift of 20 to 40 percent of the velocity of light, did these stellar-looking objects suddenly appear with redshifts of 80 to 90 percent?

Rather than regard these quasars as being at lesser distances so as to give them quite modest expansion velocities, conventional theorists attempted to incorporate the redshift effect into their existing beliefs.

But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation. Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe.

In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, RAISE SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE VALIDITY OF THE UNDERLYING THEORY.So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific enquiry.

As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory.

Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesise an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.

In this paper we show that other models of a Universe in dynamical equilibrium without expansion had predicted this temperature prior to Gamow. Moreover, we show that Gamow's own predictions were worse than these previous ones.

Can galaxies, like atoms and mole cules, posses quantized states? And do the findings of Tifft and Cocke undermine the redshift-distance relationship? The answer might be YES; and then all of astronomy and our entire view of the universe and its history would have to be reformulated.

Allocating funding to investigations into the big bang's validity, and its alternatives, would allow the scientific process to determine our most accurate model of the history of the universe.