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Theoretical Physics Breakthrough or Hoax?
Brooklyn Bob writes "Ever get the feeling that some theoretical physics papers just don't make sense? According to this New York Times article, you may be right. Genius or gibberish? Who knows?" This belongs on your virtual refrigerator with nice big virtual magnet.
I am tired of Slashdot's ceaseless battering of the physics community in the name of sensationalism. This is a blatant attempt to sully the good name of physics just because of the writer's inability to understand it.
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Theoretical physics is simply that. Always take these things with a grain of salt. Our scientific process is based on questioning assumptions and breaking the rules.
His colleague Dr. Jackiw compared modern physics to modern art: "One person looks at a piece of art and says it is gibberish; another person looks and says it's wonderful."
:-))
Unfortunately, modern art isn't ultimately graded on if it's falsifiable or not, whereas physics is. Thus, the debate of good/bad art can rage forever without settlement, and that's fine; however, sooner or later, many scientific theories are demonstrated to be false (excepting those which aren't, of course.
For those of you trying to support the physics community here, note that this article is not just useless physics bashing. It is about a real problem in all scientific disciplines.
This article is not about criticism of the system, but rather specific criticism of specific people in the system. It is responsibility of the schools and journals, and especially thesis advisors to make sure people are doing adaquate work.
There was an excuse given by these guys' advisor in the article about these guys working for 10 years and they should get a degree for that, even if they didn't exactly display a command of the mathmatics behind their theory.
This is absolute bullshit!
I don't care how long or hard you are working on something. If you want a degree in theoretical physics, you'd damn well better be able to understand your own thesis. If you can't AT LEAST explain it to your advisor, there is no way I can see to give you a PhD.
No, but to people who do understand the field in which the Bogdanov brothers claim to be researching (I am a PhD student in string theory and include myself in this set), their paper is complete gibberish.
Their paper is full of unfounded assertions strung together, combined with definitions and other assertions that are patently false. The paper does not follow a logical chain of reasoning that allows the reader to repeat or verify their conclusions (which are also not clearly stated).
Furthermore, when confronted by other theoretical physicists (on the sci.physics.research Usenet group) with specific, detailed questions about their work, the authors have systematically refused to answer, or selectively answered with further vague or absurd statements. To me, this is the real clincher: they have completely failed to demonstrate a technical understanding of the field in which they claim to be working.
It is clear to everyone in the field that these papers are nonsense and should never have been published. The only actual supporters of the authors seem to be from non-scientists or physicists who are unqualified to judge the work itself.
Just as it is with a post to slashdot, being right isnt enough. If a physics paper cannot be understood by physicists, and does not provide insight into anything meaningful or testable then the paper is rightly called gibberish.
Did you read the article? It clear that these guys have a shady past at best, previously guilty of plagiarism. Also, a few other noted scientists stated that these guys 'do not know how to do physics' based on their conversations with them. Most of physics does make sense because it is basic laws of motion and gravity. The stuff that is hard for most people to understand are things like quantum physics and theoretical physics.
What?
Besides, the article focuses more on the integrity of articles printed in scientific journals, and how it is hard to figure out if something is worthwhile or if it is crap when they're so hard to understand.
What?
Check out the Guardian's top 10 scientific blunders page. They've got psychologists, physicists, chemists... all working to pull down science's reputation.
For a collection of stuff on this subject, search google groups on ``reverse sokal hoax''. Then read the (long) thread in sci.physics.research.
I'm not a string theorist so I can't be 100% sure, but this stuff sure sounds like nonsense. The part about the Foucault pendulum aligning with the initial singularity sounds really silly. To quote John Baez, a mathmatical physicist (see below for a link)
It [one of the papers in question] goes on to discuss the supposed connection between N = 2 supergravity, Donaldson theory, KMS states and the Foucault pendulum experiment, which he claims "cannot be explained satisfactorily in either classical or relativistic mechanics". If you know some physics you'll find this statement slightly odd.
As I said, I'm not a string theorist, so I don't know for sure, but some very sharp people seem to support the contention that this is nonsense. John Baez has compiled some of the relvent stuff on his webapge, here. Jacques Distler's blog also contains some good analysis.
'Every action has an equal and opposite reaction' is logically flawed as a scientific theory since it cannot be disproved.
Um, no, you're confused. If the theory were false, then I could disprove it by performing an experiment where an action does not have an equal and opposite reaction. Thus, the theory is hypothetically falsifiable and therefore valid as a theory (it may be incorrect, but at least it is phrased as a valid theory).
If numerous experiments demonstrating action and reaction do not disprove it, then odds are that it is also correct.
But proof of correctness is never absolute (maybe we haven't found the circumstances under which it doesn't hold, yet), while proof of incorrectness is.
-- Alastair
The field of physics is obviously doing a good enough job of sullying itself. You see, despite whether or not the writer understands what's happening, the article talks about scientists and mathemeticians sullying physics:
Scientists have been debating whether the Bogdanov brothers are really geniuses with a new view of the moment before the universe began or simply earnest scientists who are in over their heads and spouting nonsense
Not to mention these quotes from people in and around the field:
1. "Dr. Roman W. Jackiw, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who read and approved Igor Bogdanov's Ph.D. thesis, said he found it speculative but "intriguing.""
2. "Dr. John Baez, a physicist and quantum gravity theorist at the University of California at Riverside, who has conducted a dialogue with the Bogdanov brothers on the Web site math.ucr.edu/home/baez/bogdanov, said, "One thing that seems pretty clear to me is that the Bogdanovs don't know how to do physics.""
3. "Dr. Peter Woit, a mathematician and physicist at Columbia University, said of the brothers' work, "Scientifically, it's clearly more or less complete nonsense, but these days that doesn't much distinguish it from a lot of the rest of the literature.""
Notice that those credentials don't appear to belong to journalists. Then who is defaming the field of physics? Maybe a physics professor, a physicist, and a mathematician! ;) Interesting.
The reporting does appear to make some physicists uncomfortable, and on slashdot it appears some are trying to push negative focus away from the physics community and onto the journalists -- a good scapegoat because of the "writer's inability to understand it" :-O
However this reaction is not surprising because any of us would do the same to protect our own field. Don't be surprised, but do see it for what it is.
The other highly suspcious aspect of this whole affair is that the work was never published online prior to being submitted to a journal.
Some background for non-physicists: thesedays the primary venue for publishing new works is the arXiv. Several hundred papers per day are uploaded here in various categories, and it is the de facto standard library of modern research in physics.
After publishing your work on the arXiv, physicists around the work can and will read your paper and submit feedback. Typically, after publication on the arXiv you might submit your work to a paper-based journal, but this is only a secondary procedure, and the only real point is to give you bonus points for your resume.
Here is the main point:
No-one reads paper journals any more!
The fact that the Bogdanov papers were never uploaded to the arxiv meant that apart from the 2 referees (who basically seem to have abdicated responsibility), no-one had, or ever would have read their work!.
If the authors were serious researchers, they would have submitted their work to the arxiv so it could be read and critiqued by their peers.
The NYT has the fairest registration deal I've ever seen, less intrusive than even Slashdot that nearly everyone here finds acceptable. I've never seen a spam from them, and I do subscribe to a daily news bulletin they provide. For a free service, I think it's fair to provide them the minimal amount of information reg. provides, information they need to justify the service internally and to advertisers -- and it's less trouble than bending over backwards to tunnel around it.
/. -- and a show of support is something I'd encourage. We subscribe to the weekend editions despite online access; there's still something to be said for newsprint.
NYT has arguably the best free (for how much longer?) general news source online -- very frequent cited on
BTW, they do not track what you read; I looked into this, and was paranoid enough to send a specific inquiry. Besides, they don't really know who "you" are.
With the Sokal hoax, many physics people jumped up and shouted that Sokal had "proven" that cultural studies was a "bogus" discipline. Now, with this hoax, the same people are backpedalling, saying that this time the issue is "complicated" and that "physics isn't for amateurs." If anything, this hoax seems more damning to me than Sokal.
;)). The paper was published because an established physicist was making bold statements about the philosophical basis of his field. That's not news? Of course, as it turned out, that physicist was a snake in the grass.
Why? In his paper, Sokal didn't pretend to be a literature professor; he claimed at the start he was a physicist. The review board of Social Text weren't physicists and so they couldn't really evaluate the physics part of his paper. Instead, they trusted Sokal that he was following the usual academic honesty and integrity in his assertions. As it turned out, and as we all now know, he wasn't -- he was intentionally distorting his beliefs about physics in order to perpetrate a hoax. What Sokal did was a lot like a researcher falsifying data: review boards usually have no way of knowing whether a submitter has falsified data and so they have to rely on the person's academic integrity, just like the board of Social Text had no way of knowing whether Sokal was sincere in his representation of physics, so they had to trust him.
The Bogdanov brothers, however, published as physicists, about physics, and in journals reviewed by physicists. Not only that, but the people who reviewed them are now spouting inanities like "he worked for ten years, so he deserved a doctorate." (Um, no, he can work for 30 years, but if he doesn't understand the stuff, he doesn't get the doctorate.)
If Sokal had tried to write as a literature professor, I highly doubt his paper would have gotten through. I've read his paper, and quite frankly, it was *not* accepted for what it had to say about cultural studies. The knowledge the paper represents of cultural studies reads like an enthusiastic but over-bold sophomore who just took his/her first class in critical theory (disclosure: I teach critical theory to sophomores, and I've seen those papers
Heh, I equate these guys as being the trolls of the physics world. Some are better than others, as witnessed on slashdot here. These guys just happen to be very good trolls.
Heck, they even have the same goals. Slashdot trolls aim to show how the mod system sucks, these guys are trying to show how worthless the peer review system is. Ultimately, however, they'll probably be given just as much credit as trolls, i.e. none at all. It's just because they've found a new medium to troll in that they're getting this much attention.
Why do you put Sokal in the same group as Schon? Schon was hedging the data to get prestige and more funding (most likely). Sokal was criticizing the social sciences for their lack of rigor by submitting a parody --- which they published without any fact checking.
So let's get it straight: Schon is a talentless hack; Sokal is a dedicated scientist who wants to see more people acting and thinking rationally. If you don't believe me, check out his website. From personal experience I can tell you that Sokal is a good guy. It makes me sick to see people like you lashing out without even taking time to learn about what you're talking about (actually, people like you were the motivation for Sokal writing that piece.).