Earlier today, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder relayed the news in one of her popular physics podcasts at YouTube:
My former academic institution discontinued my affiliation with them after members of the community complained about my criticism, on their research, and on academic conduct in general, and I refused to agree to tone policing. Free speech in Germany has a big problem indeed.
Harsh Words
In the first couple of minutes, transcribed, she does not mince words:
[0:00] Welcome to another episode of Sabine’s getting herself into trouble. I was recently contacted by a physicist who was very upset that I judge their research to be 100% [ __ ].
He demanded that I remove my video and when I politely declined, complained about me to some people he must have thought were my supervisors in a very deliberate attempt to exert pressure on me.
I am no longer affiliated with the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. Germany, the land of the free thinkers.
If science was a circus, they’d all be clowns by now.
Serves her right, you might say. Shouldn’t have used the B- word. Fair enough. I know some people get offended by my language, though. I think that when it comes to swear words, I’m very moderate. Come on. What the [ __ ] Is this the 16th century or what? I express myself this way because well, for one thing, it’s what I think.
But more importantly, I don’t want to leave you guessing what I mean. But I can say this entirely without swear words:. A lot of research [in] the foundations of physics is now pseudocience. It hasn’t followed the scientific method for decades.
I’m not bothered by this person’s behavior or by losing my affiliation again because thanks to you, I’m now fully financially independent, which is why I can, in contrast to many others, afford to publicly criticize academic research. But what does bother me is that some physicists still don’t understand the problem with what they call science.
Of course, I’m not the only one who has noticed this problem. I call it mathematical stories or mathematical fiction or just [ __ ] Others have called it mathematical gymnastics or fairy tale physics. It’s why David Lindley declared the end of physics. And one of the reasons why John Horgan declared the end of science. I’m not making any particularly novel observation here.
But it keeps going on. This is what blows my mind. It doesn’t matter how obviously this is pseudocience. It doesn’t matter how many people call out this problem, how many books are written about it. It doesn’t matter what I say in any of my videos. It keeps going.
They keep on producing more of these garbage papers each day and they continue to get published and they continue to get paid for it and then they put out press releases and the media picks it up and people ask me what I think and I say it’s [ __ ] because that’s what it is.
The problem is widely known among people in the field who tend to acknowledge it privately but would never admit to it in public because their money and their reputation depends on it. Well, most of them wouldn’t admit it…
She goes on to talk about the problem of pseudoscience in the vast paper mill. No doubt there will be more fallout (this episode seems headed for at least half a million views). But the timing is interesting.
Curious Timing
Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a story implying that Hossenfelder was a physics conspiracy theorist:
This resentment of scientific authority figures is the major attraction of what might be called “conspiracy physics.” Most fringe theories are too arcane for listeners to understand, but anyone can grasp the idea that academic physics is just one more corrupt and self-serving establishment. The German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder has attracted 1.72 million YouTube subscribers in part by attacking her colleagues: “Your problem is that you’re lying to the people who pay you,” she declared. “Your problem is that you’re cowards without a shred of scientific integrity.” …
Such renegades get a friendly reception from Joe Rogan, who regularly has Weinstein on his top-ranked podcast. Rogan’s blend of genuine interest in physics with just-asking-questions goofiness and suspicion of intellectual authority has created a template followed by other popular podcasters.
The story followed, as we reported then, on a nasty exchange between Johns Hopkins University cosmologist Sean Carroll and mathematical physicist Eric Weinstein on Piers Morgan’s show. On her own channel, Hossenfelder jumped in to defend Weinstein from the Establishment figure Carroll. She did not back Weinstein’s theory particularly but she was concerned about the poor quality of the cosmology literature overall.
The Flood of “Garbage Papers”
Indeed, what was remarkable about the Wall Street Journal piece was the willingness of everyone to admit that the decades-long hottie — string theory — has been a disappointment (without quite saying it, of course). And that’s not even news any more.
No doubt there will be fallout over the next few weeks that will shed more light. For now, it seems unlikely that the only reason — in a world awash in profanity and detraction — that the Munich Center parted ways with Hossenfelder is bad language in her videos. Or, for that matter, that she holds a so-far-unnamed colleague’s theory in deficient esteem. Time will tell but it sounds more like the work of Team Cancel.
This will do nothing to allay suspicion that she is right about the flood of “garbage papers.”
Cross-posted at Mind Matters News.
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