The folks complaining about the suppression of heterodox ideas in physics are, frequently, also complaining that epidemiologists can’t tell you the truth “because of Fauci.” I mean, come on.
@mcnees I assume you're speaking here of the people one often sees online who would rank highly on @johncarlosbaez's crackpot index and not the likes of Hossenfelder, Woit, and Smolin, unless I've missed some key anti-vax developments there.
@mcnees Do you think this is a new phenomenon or just a new consequence of an existing one?
And to be fair, it sounds like you're talking about people claiming some concerted top-down attempt at silencing dissent (a pretty absurd idea if one is familiar with science/scientists), whereas I think most of the critics I mentioned talk more about things as a matter of group think among researchers (that then impacts the distribution of funding) rather than some grand conspiracy.
@internic @mcnees - yes, the critics listed actually know a fair amount of physics and complain about string theorists and fans of supersymmetry hogging all the funding and making exaggerated claims for their work, while there are also lots of people who don't know much physics (at least not general relativity and quantum field theory) and believe there's a grand conspiracy to suppress or ignore new ideas - almost always *their own* new ideas.
@johncarlosbaez @internic @mcnees
I think there's a different kind of crackpottery that happens with actual physicists (this is not *exclusive* to physicists, mind you, but they seem particularly prone to it):
When you have people who understand the Fundamental Laws of Everything (what physics often gets billed as) -- or, rather, understand them at least as well as anybody else does -- there's a tendency to believe one can just jump over to any other field of science and start making pronouncements on the basis of being a Very Bright Person capable of working stuff out for oneself (which, thus far, may actually be true),
and then running as far as those particular fumes will take you,
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@johncarlosbaez @internic @mcnees
... and then, e.g., making some "discovery" (usually some kind of back-of-the-envelope calculation) that shows that Other Field = Bullshit or otherwise would upend things,
... evidently not considering for a moment that they might not be the first person to have thought of said issue, that actual practitioners of said field have already thoroughly plowed the territory in question, that this actually comes up during of week two of Other Field 101 or is otherwise easily dismissed, and thence physicist is actually making a fool out of themself,
... even if the popular press is not necessarily in the best position to figure this out.
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@johncarlosbaez @internic @mcnees
general moral of the story being, if somebody is doing a field jump, watch out:
whether it's William Happer doing climate science,
or Roger Penrose doing computer science,
or Sabine Hossenfelder doing developmental biology,
the fact that they're Physicists doesn't necessarily mean they know what they're talking about when the subject is Not Physics.
(for a non-physicist example, cf. Linus Pauling on the subject of Vitamin C).
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@johncarlosbaez @internic @mcnees
Yes, there *have* been success stories. E.g., Richard Feynman, by all accounts did put out a couple of actual credible biology papers, BUT,... he did the homework (sat in on few months of intro courses, talked to actual biologists about what he was doing, and actually made it through [biologist] peer review). These cases tend to be more the exception than the rule.
(and yes, I'm not the first person to have noticed this:
)
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@wrog @internic @mcnees - yes, physicists are famous for their self-confident exploration of other subjects in their later careers. Here's a great tale of three cases: Luis Alvarez (using cosmic rays to look for hidden chambers in pyramids, using iridium deposits to argue for asteroid impact killing off the dinosaurs), Fred Hoyle (panspermia) and Avi Loeb (aliens).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI&list=PLlKeLhFiZ6hYZXSzBW9eItF44x82ldgZ9&index=3
@johncarlosbaez @wrog @internic @mcnees One of these things is not like the others.
i.e. the iridium layer does trace the K-Pg impact.
@johncarlosbaez
Don’t forget Brian Josephson!
@wrog @johncarlosbaez @internic @mcnees When you have a Large Hadron Collider everything looks like something you could hit with a proton 😅
@johncarlosbaez @internic @mcnees
A contributing factor: What I'll call the "Princeton Physics" culture -- maybe this didn't originate there, but, as a leading department for a long time -- graduates tend to get hired by all other physics departments (Princeton:Physics :: Harvard: Law/Business :: MIT:Engineering), they have Influence.
tldr: Somebody, long ago, got REALLY TIRED of the "useless ivory tower academic" trope (*). Physics = Real World. Students must be able to apply their knowledge
... to the point where, graduation = must pass an oral exam with rapid-fire questions like "How much water flows out the mouth of the Mississippi in a day?" show you know your stuff, can think on your feet, and can apply it to EVERYTHING.
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@johncarlosbaez @internic @mcnees
( And if you're a software developer and this interview style sounds familiar, it's not your imagination.
In the mid-1980s Microsoft, when it was still a small company, purchased Nathan Myhrvold's firm, and in so doing, acquired a boatload of Princeton-educated physicists. This also coincided with Reagan torching of research/edu funding (*after* a decade of NSF screaming "Oh no, baby boomers are going to retire! We need MORE physical science grad students!"),
and so there were lots of unemployed physicists they could vacuum up....
... Which affected the corporate culture. Later, once Microsoft became hugely successful, their practices in pretty much everything were adopted elsewhere.
)
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@johncarlosbaez @internic @mcnees
Not saying this is necessarily a bad thing to make students go through (admittedly, *I* don't like it because I'm one of those people who's really *bad* at thinking on my feet...),
but if it's emphasized too much, i.e, if you have a program that encourages people to think they can Do Everything,
then you shouldn't be *that* surprised at it graduating people who think they can Do Everything.
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(*) and I'm sure this hating-on-the-useless-academic-stereotype pathology exists elsewhere, but it manifests in different ways, e.g., MIT and its physical education requirement ("engineers are NOT sickly nerds who live in the basement; they are HEALTHY and ATHLETIC!")
@internic There are some exceptions (like the folks you mention) but I’m surprised at some of the popular accounts saying these things. Folks who had real training and now say wild things and coast on contrarianism.