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"string theory lied to us and now science communication is hard"
(www.youtube.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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It seems a little over-the-top to be angry at physicists from 30-40 years ago for being wrong.
Scientists aren’t priests, and science isn’t a religion. Expecting scientists to always be right, always be humble, and everything they add to “science” to be sacred and correct and immutable is a little silly.
This is how science works. It’s messy. It goes in delicious looking directions that turn out to be dead ends. Humans create ideas (with all the hubris and errors of being human) that other humans test (with all the hubris and errors of being human.)
I was struck by how angered she was by physicists thinking they were right and saying “we’re doing something real”. They were doing something real: they were exploring and testing an idea. Without that work, the idea could never have been proved wrong.
(My personal “string theory” is that string/cordage is humanity’s greatest invention, and my user name is a joke.)
Not sure if you are serious? If so, I think you probably didn't understand why she is angry. As she clearly states, studying string theory in itself is totally valid. But the way they presented their ideas or let their ideas be presented is the reason she is angry.
Yes, I’m serious.
They presented their ideas the way every excited scientist does. Being angry at them for that is kind of silly. Should I be angry that I was taught the “fact” that animals and plants migrated between stationary continents via land bridges? That scientists were excitedly drawing up complex bridges and timelines? That they told everyone about their fabulous revolutionary bridges? Nope. It’s just one funny step in a funny dance humanity does.
Angrily putting up a picture of herself as a child in the 90’s who was excited about string theory and saying she was betrayed by later work? I don’t get it.
I watched the video a couple of weeks ago, I think, so my recall might not be exact. However, my takeaway wasn't that the scientists expressed excitement about their ideas. Instead, I think her issue was that they continued to outwardly express excitement and hype their field even after it was obvious that it was an avenue of inquiry that could never be meaningfully tested. I think she found these later actions to be disingenuous and harmful to the larger field.
Whether her assessment is accurate, I can't really say since this isn't my field. However, I recall many of the discussions she cites in her summary and her characterization seems fair. My gut says that there is at least some validity to her criticisms.
Who is "they"? Every string theorist ever?
Her rant is dumb because she's mad at Brian Greene and is instead othering an entire group of physicists who simply worked hard on theory they thought might lead somewhere.
Well, I meant the field of string theory and the leadng scientists she mentioned. And calling her rant dumb seems like you are dismissing her argument without actually thinking about it. So you probably aren't interested in an open discussion either...
She only mentions Brian Greene and then lumps every single other string physicist in with him.
I'm calling it dumb because I listened to the whole thing, thought about it, and assessed it to be dumb.
You don't need half an hour to say "Brian Greene is a dingus who overrepresented his confidence in string theory to sell books", and that was the only legitimate point she actually made.
Yeah, people are distrustful of science in America, but to blame that all on string theory is absurd. Nothing about her argument is backed up by anything remotely resembling sociological research on trust in science, she just complains that people didn't want to spend 200B dollars on a particle accelerator and blames string theory cause she heard one crackpot mention it one time.
I didn't see it as her being angry at the ones 40 years ago, but the ones who continued the hype even though it was obvious string theory wasn't falsifiable
The ones who were human and were full of hubris and errors and didn’t want to give up their pet theory?
Being angry at humans for being human is kinda futile. Humans have always done this, and always will.
And the excited physicists didn’t destroy science communication any more than Stephen Jay Gould did. People can be wrong. People can cling to things they cherish and that they poured their heart and years of effort into.
People are people, and this too shall pass.
It's also very human to commit murder; humans have always committed murder, and always will. That doesn't mean I can't be mad at someone for doing it..
I think murder might be a leeeeeeeetle bit different than refusing to give up on a theory you worked on for 30 or 40 years.
My point is that saying you can't hold something against someone because it's human nature isn't a reasonable argument.
I do think this is more an issue with science communication broadly than string theory specifically - every field has its own examples, and medicine is notorious for it - but she is right that scientific researchers (the subject matter experts) have a responsibility to accurately communicate their work when speaking to the public.
Its one thing for an enthusiast to inadvertently oversell a concept to the public as fact because they are excited and only understand at only a basic level. It's another entirely for someone who's been researching that concept for 30-40 years, with the express intent of proving or disproving its validity, to oversell it as fact when they're whole job is to be intimately familiar with its shortcomings. They, of all people, should know better - and that means they have a responsibility to do better.
Science does get messy, by design, but it is the duty of those who communicate their science to be honest about that messiness, not mask it by unfounded statements to sell their ideas to people that don't have the research expertise to spot the falsehoods.