The Reference Frame: fast comments. Change your avatar now (works).
You are framed by these jounalists. Remember story between New Yorker and Yau? They inverviewed him without telling him their motivation, made recording. Taking partial of his words as proof to their own purpose. It is hard to accuse them legally because their tape proved yau was consentive. Hamilton refused them, thus they dared not use his words to support them. Even a scientific journalist want to interview you, you'd better refuse him. Write everything you want to publish by yourself, thus you can preview the article before publication, otherwise those journalists or editors can abuse your own word to humiliate you.
Dear Eric,
thank you for your wise analysis. The only good luck is that the image is not among my priorities. 
Of course, I realize that it is impossible for me to sue anyone in the U.S., especially not in this case. I have been used to have no human rights or dignity most of my life so it's nothing new. Have a good night.
All the best
Lubos
Lubos,
If any comments purporting to be from you on my blog are really not yours, let me know and I will remove them. All the ones there represent the same opinions you have expressed at other times and on your own blog, and show every evidence of coming from you. But if they aren't let me know, and also let me know who you think is behind this deception.
Peter
Lubos, if you got the profit from it I would pay the $30 to read the article, but I don't really want to contribute to the profits of a magazine that abuses you. I'm sorry and angry that you've had to suffer. I'll put a hex on the author of the article. Was there ever a time when you could really trust journalists?
Dear Mr. Woit,
I cannot be telling you or anyone else about every deliberately untrue statement, every fraud, every deception, and every distortion of reality on your blog because you have been doing nothing else than writing lies, committing fraud, and piling distortions at least for several years, producing literally megabytes of garbage, and you have organized a whole group of immoral and uneducated people to help you with this job.
You have simultaneously written a book full of similar dishonest and/or unreasonable material which has several hundreds of pages. What you're doing is a massive industry of fraud. It is just impossible to be refuting every single dirty distortion or manipulation with words you create. If someone is ready to believe anything from you, it is just already too bad, and I have learned that it probably makes no sense to be trying to explain anything or discuss anything with those who are so limited that they can't figure that you are just a sour dishonest joke themselves.
Of course that you are the main person behind all this deception. Everyone else is just an irrelevant worker in the field.
Best regards
Lubos Motl
Dear Rae, how are you? Thanks for your warm words.
Journalists, like everyone else, are just people - but it is obvious they become more trustworthy if they don't have any kind of negative, anti-civilization agenda. There are thousands of reports by journalists every day that are probably true and useful but don't make the authors famous or interesting in any way.
And then you have journalists with an agenda who choose a target whose proper evaluation exceeds their qualities by a lot. They know that they can't become politicians or scientists themselves, but they feel that they have enough power to throw the mud around. So they do so.
Especially if they become synchronized like in this case, so that they don't have to be afraid to write anything wrong because there are many of them, it becomes too bad because all the natural regulation mechanisms fail.
There have arguably been journalists with negative emotions who have done a great job but these people never relied on this support by a similarly handicapped group. I mean people like Oriana Fallaci who has been a brave and extraordinary person. But she was at real risk for writing predominantly true and important things.
And then there exist other people who were and are writing mostly correct and important things as journalists but all these people were good in another field of human activity, too.
The current wave of anti-physics scribblers has nothing to be afraid of and it is run by people who can't do anything else which are two main mechanisms why their production has no value.
All the best
Lubos
Great blog with good interesting informations.
Thank you. I have bookmarked it.
Greetz Elena.
Dear Lubos,
For what reason were your relatives interviewed by the communist state police?
anon
The Nature review link no longer works. Never mind, here is the review:
Nature 443, 491(5 October 2006) | doi:10.1038/443491a; Published online 4 October 2006
Theorists snap over string pieces
Geoff Brumfiel
Abstract
Books spark war of words in physics.
Two recently published books are riling the small but influential community of string theorists, by arguing that the field is wandering dangerously far from the mainstream.
The books' titles say it all: Not Even Wrong, a phrase that physicist Wolfgang Pauli used to describe incomplete ideas, and The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. Both articulate a fear that the field is becoming too abstract and is focusing on aesthetics rather than reality. Some physicists even warn that the theory's dominance could pose a threat to the scientific method itself (see page 507).
Those accusations are vehemently denied by string theorists, and the books — written by outsiders — have stirred deep resentment in the tight-knit community. Not Even Wrong was published in June and The Trouble with Physics came out in September; shortly after they appeared on the Amazon books website, string theorist Lubo Motl of Harvard University posted reviews furiously entitled "Bitter emotions and obsolete understanding of high-energy physics" and "Another postmodern diatribe against modern physics and scientific method". As Nature went to press, the reviews had been removed.
Few in the community are, at least publicly, as vitriolic as Motl. But many are angry and struggling to deal with the criticism. "Most of my friends are quietly upset," says Leonard Susskind, a string theorist at Stanford University in California.
String theory postulates that the Universe consists of tiny strings vibrating in ten or so dimensions. Its fortunes have been buoyed by popular books in the past — most notably Brian Greene's 1999 bestseller The Elegant Universe, which said that the approach might unify the incompatible theories of gravity and quantum mechanics.
Strung up
But the theory has its share of problems, and these are the focus of the new works. For one thing, recent calculations suggest that it generates 10500 possible models of the Universe (see Nature 439, 10–12; 2006). This renders the theory essentially meaningless, according to critics. When these countless possibilities were first announced, Lee Smolin was already working on the book that eventually became The Trouble With Physics. A physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, Smolin had previously worked on string theory. "I and many other people began to get worried," he says.
The danger is that you'll end up with the theoretical community becoming completely isolated from the rest of physics.
Another difficulty is that if strings exist, they would be detectable only at energies far above anything that today's experiments can measur
... measure. "As you're not constrained by having to reproduce experiments, you can go off and play with whatever you want," says Peter Woit, a mathematician at Columbia University in New York City, and author of Not Even Wrong. "The danger is that you'll end up with the theoretical community becoming completely isolated from the rest of physics."
Smolin, whose book promotes an alternative theory known as loop quantum gravity, adds that string theorists have intentionally cut themselves off. "None of the major string theory groups has hired a postdoc or faculty member working in any of the other approaches to quantum gravity," he says. "But other research groups in quantum gravity have often hired young people working in string theory out of a sense that it should be encouraged."
Boundary issues
String theorists dispute the claim that they are isolating themselves. In recent years the theory has contributed significantly to heavy-ion physics, according to Joe Polchinski, a string theorist at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California. When the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, first produced a hot quark gas, it was string theory that correctly predicted, retrospectively, some of the gas's properties. "In many ways, I feel the boundaries with other areas of physics are coming down," Polchinski says.
Warren Perkins, a cosmologist and particle theorist at Swansea University in Wales, agrees. In recent years, he says, string theory has been proven equivalent to a conventional 'field theory', of the type being used to predict how particles will behave at the soon-to-open Large Hadron Collider, sited near Geneva. "There has been a lot of cross-talk between field theory and string theory," says Perkins. In some cases, string theory has provided far simpler approximations than its field-theory counterpart.
None of the major string theory groups has hired someone working in any of the other approaches to quantum gravity.
But strings have yet to provide the elusive link between gravity and quantum mechanics, hoped for by so many theorists. "The claims, when it comes to theoretical physics, tend to be exaggerated," says Abhay Ashtekar, who works on quantum gravity at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. He believes the inability of the community to live up to those expectations has made it defensive.
The books leave string theorists such as Susskind wondering how to approach such strong public criticism. "I don't know if the right thing is to worry about the public image or keep quiet," he says. He fears the argument may "fuel the discrediting of scientific expertise".
That's something that Smolin and Woit insist they don't want. Woit says his problem isn't with the theory itself, just some of its more grandiose claims. "There are some real things you can do with string theory," he says.
Smolin agrees, and says
... he hopes theorists will read his book to get a better understanding of his specific issues. "If they don't want to buy it, tell them to get in touch with me and I'll send them a copy."
"It's enough to write something controversial - more precisely, it's enough to write something about an important topic that is completely untrue - and you can be sure that the journalists and effective journalists will make a hero out of you."
Like writing about global warming?
Dear Lubos,
It seems to me that any book designed to redress “black and blue” beating that physics has recently taken will be difficult to write. The public don’t like to hear that the experts were right all along and if Goliath had beaten David, we wouldn’t still be telling the story 2000 years later.
What the public really wants is entertainment. It doesn’t even have to be true so long as there are conspiracies, secret societies a racy plot and large helpings of sex. So why not outflank the crackpots and recapture the public with a work of fiction. Here’s my idea: Commission Dan Brown to write a novel about string theory.
The Crackpot Codex – plot spoiler follows.
Tom Bosull a bright young Harvard physicist unearths a secret notebook written by Einstein behind a secret panel in the IAS. In this notebook Einstein claims to have discovered the correct equations for M-theory but an immediate consequence of the equations is that it is possible to build a terrible weapon that collapses the hierarchy on your enemies causing them to spontaneously turn into black holes. A few microseconds later they re-appear as a blast of Hawking radiation.
Of course Einstein is horrified and spends the rest of his life pretending to bumble about and cover his tracks. He forms a secret society called "Octopus Dei" based in Canada at a secret place called the Circumference Institute devoted to preventing the equation from falling in the wrong hands.
Octopus Dei takes its work very seriously. It invents Global Warming to divert scientific funds to junk science. It infiltrates the Nobel Committee to ensure that only work on low energy physics gets the prizes. Octopus Dei initiates posing as journalists write anti-science articles in popular magazines and newspapers. Physics departments all over the world begin to close, but string theory research is not fully stopped.
As string theorists get closer to the forbidden formula, Octopus Dei’s tactics become more desperate. Posing as serious academics, the high priests of Octopus Dei release crackpot books rubbishing string theory and attempt to discredit it openly in public.
The breakthrough occurs when a journalist called Dolt researching anti-string sentiment at the Circumference Institute meets and falls in love a beautiful young female physicist codenamed “C”. He immediately decides to give up writing and takes up f***ing instead. However his lover is actually a disaffected high priestess of Octopus Dei. Leaking the formula in writing is too dangerous so “C” and her lover start delivering pizzas to leading physicists with clues written in the toppings.
Dolt delivers Tom Bosull a frutti di mari pizza with the key term of the equation written in loops of octopus on it. Tom immediately recognises the clue and completes the equations for M-theory.
Tom tries to work out the formula for the weapon. However, he sees that Einstein (who was never a good mathematician) has misplaced a minus s
...misplaced a minus sign and in fact T-duality means that the black holes can't get big enough to be dangerous. Instead matter can be safely turned into radiation and the world's energy problems are solved.
Tom explains all in his Nobel Prize speech in Stockholm and the LHC is turned into the world's first black hole power station.
All the crackpots’ books are collected up and fed into the LHC. The energy is enough to supply the whole planet for a thousand years.
The End
After this, the public won’t be able to get enough of string theory and anti-string comments will be seen as the work of a secret society of science-haters. Shit sticks – ask any member of Opus Dei.
best regards,
Didn't Michael Crichton already write fiction about global warming and even testify in congress about it?
I'd love to read a substantive point-by-point rebuttal to the ideas discussed in the New Yorker article on String Theory. Can anybody point me to something? I'm not interested in reading venting about evil, uninformed journalists.
Dear Mr. Tim Janof,
it would be very nice to help you but you will probably be disappointed. There are about 1000-2000 string theorists in the world, and because most of them are rather busy with more serious stuff and with other duties, it is not possible for them to answer long articles written by a much larger portion of journalists - who are paid for writing these things - point by point.
Moreover, I am convinced that everyone who follows these things would agree that the article in the New Yorker (by Jim Holt) contains no significant points that are worth discussion or worth reading by an intelligent reader who is also familiar with basics of modern physics.
It is a mixture of basic facts about string theory that have been said hundreds of times and basic myths and conspiracy theories about string theory and colorful criticisms involving theology etc. that have also been said or written hundreds of times and there is nothing rational in them that could be converted to an experiment or a calculation.
In science, it is just not believed that the New Yorker article has something to do with a scientific discussion. The closest thing to address every point of such articles that you can find on the web is probably this blog. You can ask someone else whether there is something about the article to answer.
They will tell you that there is a lot of research in string theory that is directly related to experiments - RHIC, the LHC, and various astrophysical experiments, and that many of the corresponding points written by Mr. Holt are not true. They will tell you that speculations about high-energy physics involving Glashow's jokes, Popper, Copernicus, or any of the distinguished scholars from last centuries are just far too vague to have any value for answering very sharp questions facing physics today. This is just not how modern physics works.
String theory doesn't change anything about the rules of science, and the experiment is the final judge. Before we have the final experiments, we must be using other arguments - inevitably more mathematical in character - and they lead wherever they lead. People try to work on whatever ideas they find promising, realistic, and interesting, and the theories about the long-term suppression of geniuses are just unreasonable.
The results of the hard research also seem to imply that there is a large number of metastable vacua - potential different Universes - and this fact makes the anthropic reasoning, at least to some extent, a natural expectation for the ultimate form of the theory explaining the Universe that will be completed in the future, whether someone likes it or not or whether someone can interpret the Bible or a philosopher in such a way that this explanation will look less appealing.
Physics is made by rational arguments, experiments, and calculations, not by dogmatic quotations of the Bible or some philosophers.
More generally, if you dream that this kind of fuzzy, sloppy
... More generally, if you dream that this kind of fuzzy, sloppy, and vicious reasoning will take over physics, you will be disappointed. The silence of the physicists is the most polite answer to Jim Holt you can get. The author is simply not thinking within the mantinels of the scientific method, and thus can't be answered using the scientific method either.
If you have some more particular point that you consider interesting, please post it here. But it is really impossible for anyone who is not paid for it to answer very long diatriabes like this one point by point.
All the best
Lubos
I'm wondering how it could ever be demonstrated that 9-dimensional objects exist, experimentally. Given that human beings live and perceive in a 4-D world (time included), how would we even recognize a 9-D object if we found one?
By what criteria do you judge something "rational", Mr. Motl? By what criteria do you judge a theory scientific? Is any belief that supports string theory, scientific? Any belief at all no matter how “irrational”? This is starting to sound like religious belief.
When someone believes in a theory with no testable predictions (for the foreseeable future), does not even consider alternative explanations, defends the theory from any criticism, and quotes results from string theory in order to both defend and attempt to refute alternative explanations, isn't that person also being dogmatic?
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