The science of Turbulence

[sawyl]

I'm currently reading Giles Foden's Turbulence, which features a thinly fictionalised version of L.F. Richardson and which is narrated by a young Met Office scientist. My problem is that, so far at least, most of the science seems distinctly ropey giving the impression that someone, either Foden or the narrator, really doesn't understand the basics. Here, for example, is the narrator musing on the geophysics of the Great Rift Valley:

[Edward Bullard] showed that gravity is lower than it ought to be in some of these Rift lakes. This negative gravity means there is material down there that's lighter than its surroundings, material that's longing to rise — and would do so in an instant were it not fore side-pressing rocks holding it down like a pair of pliers. Bullard's anomalies mean some of the Rift is not just foundered valleys, the consequences of all fall. Some of it must have been pushed down. If there is a shift of plate tectonics, that material will come flying up.

Negative gravity? And rocks having to be restrained from flying up? Really?