The Hidden Reality Draws Ire From Physicists

eldavojohn writes "Scientific American is running a piece by science journalist John Horgan attacking pop physicist Brian Greene's latest offering, titled The Hidden Reality. He's not entirely alone; Not Even Wrong backs him up and reminds us of a growing list of multiverse propaganda. The journal Nature ran a short piece (subscription required) trying to remind everyone that Greene's book is more theory than fact, but apart from those three responses, the popular press seems to be gobbling up this tantalizing concept of a multiverse. NPR offers an excerpt while SFGate and The Wall Street Journal entertain us with interviews of the controversial Greene. The New York Times and Salon seem to think it's worthwhile, with Salon even calling it 'the science behind' the multiverse theory. The New York Times thought it worthwhile to give Greene an op-ed column. For better or for worse, Greene has certainly brought this great debate to the public's attention — similar to his exhibition of String Theory."

Comments

Draws Ire From Physicists

[Anonymous Coward]

But the conservation of ire insures that an equal amount of economists will chill out.

Re:So...

[keytoe]

Which means it is not and cannot be science. Unless someone comes up with a way to test the "multiverse" theory, it is nothing more than a mental exercise.

He actually addressed this when he was on Colbert the other night. His point is that the maths indicate that this may be true, but that there is no way to scientifically prove it given current technology and understanding. This is similar to the fact that several aspects of Einstein's theories were indicated via math but not verifiable via experimentation. Einstein didn't even believe them. They were ultimately proven true as technology advanced to the point that the relevant experiments became possible.

The premise of his position is simply that math, while ultimately a mental exercise, can help guild the focus of scientific experimentation by indicating possibility. That's not really a controversial position in and of itself.

What the media are doing with this, on the other hand, is pretty much par for the course in science reporting.

Uhhh... whut?

[PCM2]

Why all the negative spin in the summary? As far as I can tell, nobody is accusing Greene of "propaganda." Rather, this is /. propagandizing at its absolute worst.

• Why call Greene a "pop physicist"? That seems to imply he's not qualified in his field, when one of the articles referenced calls him "a physicist at Columbia University" who is "is an immensely talented science explicator." It describes his other books as "smart, witty bestsellers."
• TFA says Greene "draws ire from physicists," then goes on to explain that a journalist from Scientific American has written an editorial, and another blog agrees. Where are the physicists? I can't read the article from Nature, but just the abstract calls Greene's book "beguiling."
• TFA goes on to accuse Greene of being "a cheerleader" for multiverse theory, a stance that puts him in the same camp, it says, as other notable physics propagandists.... such as Stephen Hawking. Whoah, hanging out in some bad company there.

Here's the real summary: Brian Greene has written on string theory for a popular audience in the past, and he's also fascinated by some of the more fringe-y elements of physics, such as the multiverse theory. He has a new book out. He has not taken any public stance on the Tea Party, abortion, or the Iraq war -- and honestly, I think it's sad that it seems to have become a requirement of modern journalism to pretend that he has.

Re:not science

[MightyMartian]

And that's the problem. It's one thing to play with various mathematical models like M-theory, and to some extent it is science in that researchers in these areas are trying to work out mathematical models that might give us a quantum theory of gravity. But something pretty peculiar has happened, particularly with some of the string theorists, in that they tend not to speak in the normal, cautious language that physicists usually do when talking about very hypothetical models. They seem to start talking in terms that would suggest to an uninformed layman that they have the Answer, so to speak. Science journalists, sadly, are among the most gullible of laymen, and will happily give guys like Greene far to much credence, and guys like Greene in return seem to take this as an opportunity to try to fight the scientific battle in the public press, which to my mind is quite inappropriate. Greene, will of course, in front of the proper audience (his peers in the physics community) speak much more cautiously, and though I hesitate to call that duplicitous behavior, I sometimes wonder. Being a science popularizer like Sagan or Hawking, is a delicate balancing act. On the one hand you want to include hypothetical solutions to long-standing problems to give an account of the state of physics and cosmology, but at the same time you want to make sure that your layman audience understands that these are in fact hypothetical solutions, currently untestable (and with variants on M-theory and its kin, for all intents and purposes pretty much completely untestable with the level of technology at our disposal for the foreseeable future, if ever).

Another thing I don't particularly like about Greene and his gang of string theorists is that they tend to poo-poo the major competitor, loop quantum gravity. While LQG isn't currently testable either, unlike the various superstring theories, which just seem to get messier as you look at them, LQG works within the 3+1 dimensional framework of classical physics. It too may be wrong, but it has a certain attraction in its own right.