I have a theory about science journalism.
Well, perhaps “model” or “hypothesis” would be a better word. Also, the basic idea isn’t original with me, but I think I can pull together pertinent evidence from a wider variety …

Not too long ago, the way the outside world tells time, Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney published a paper in Science on the topic of “Framing.” Well, ’tweren’t really a paper — truth be told, it was more like an Op-Ed wi…

“Brother, can you spare a paradigm? –” Sidney Morgenbesser.

E. Philosophy

My last point was:

16. Lees says that science clearly calls for a revolution. Maybe the opposite is true. Lee says that science is now more conservative (anti revolutions) than ever. This is incorrect. The whole revolution terminology is crooked.

(For the earlier points see comments (323 324) and pointers in (316).)

This point is mainly a philosophical disagreement I have with Lee (and others) and it also reflects on practical matters.

2. Philosophy of science

We often see attempts in the debate about string theory to apply insights from philosophy of science, whether it is the Popperian notion of falsifiability, or the earlier statistically-based notions of verification (like the Bayesian notion), to derive definite conclusions concerning various aspects of the debate. Lee’s strong reliance on Kuhn’s philosophy of science is also in this spirit.

While interesting, all these attempts have a limited potential. We have to remember that all the philosophy of science theories that I mentioned, as others, have very partial descriptive and normative value. Rather than giving clear normative rules how science should be done or a clear description how science have been done, philosophy of science is important to understand what science is, and to introduce language and tools to talk academically and scientifically about science.

3. Kuhn

The notion of scientific revolutions was coined by Kuhn. So just to be sure when I am in disagreement with Lee and when I am disagreeing with Kuhn, I did take the trouble to read Kuhn’s book, ( ). One interesting thing I discovered is Kuhn’s description of how Newtonian physics(!) had been suffering for centuries from problems that resemble the problems of string theory today: lack of experimental conformation, and worse, evidence that appeared to be in conflict with the theory.

The “technical” terms coined by Kuhn of paradigms and periods of normal science and of paradigm-shift were both highly influential and highly controversial on their own. But the metaphor of “revolutions” was what capture the imagination the most. This was a great metaphor. The term “phase transition” or simply “transition” could capture Kuhn’s theory better than “revolution” and as a physicists he was surely aware of these terms, but “scientific revolutions” was a great brand-name which overshadowed everything else. Kuhn’s notion of a revolution is not a myth as nc said but a metaphor, and a great metaphor indeed.

Kuhn agrees (but not some of his followers) that the notion of scientific progress is real and that the ultimate goal is progress. One trouble with the revolution idea is that for some people (especially men ?) revolutions are more appealing than progress, and are becoming the goal rather than a mean. One reason may be that progress is not easy to define or to agree upon. But surely the main reason is that a revolution is a great excitement.

Even if we accept the notion of a revolution, another problem which is very explicit in Lee’s writing but also already presented in Kuhn’s book is the tendency to automatically identify highlights of scientific progress (and other human activities) with revolutions.

Does Mozart’s music reflects a revolution? In my opinion it is not, and it is silly to regard it as such, in spite being a highlight of human achievement.

4. The high-energy physics’ revolutions.

Let’s look at some prominent “revolutions” in this debate. Is the “second string revolution” a revolution? There were five potential string theories studied. As can be fully expected, some unexpected relations between them were found. And then there was the nice idea and supporting works suggesting that all these 5 theories emerge in a larger 11-dimensional description of the universe. This solves some problems and leads to some others. In my opinion, while an important development, it is not a revolution by any stretch of the imagination.

But whose opinion counts? Actually, this is a point Kuhn himself discusses. Perhaps one of his statements that opened the path to “Kuhnism” and “relativism” to which he later objected, was his view that a revolution is in the eyes of the involved scientists and not the eyes of an objective observer.

Was the standard model a revolution? In an article criticizing Kuhn’s book Steven Weinberg claims it was not and on this point he appear to be right. Weinberg’s opinion as a major player in the making of the standard model should count even according to Kuhn.

Was string theory itself (or the “first superstring revolution”) a revolution? Maybe. It looks to me more like the non-revolutionary great progress as we see in music. Time will tell whether it is like Mozart, Chopin or Paganini.

5. Pulling off a revolution; Weinberg and Smolin

“More than any time in the history of science the cards are stacked against the revolutionary. such people are simply not tolerated in the research universities. Little wonder, then, that even when the science clearly calls for one, we can’t seem to pull off a revolution.” (Lee Smolin, TTWP p. 348)

It seems that the whole revolution rhetoric crooked the scientific agendas. Science clearly call for progress, also for some inner reflection about previous progress and about goals. Sure enough, some changes, even sharp changes and some backtracking are required. But the revolution spirit is obscure. One change “clearly” called for is to let the revolution idealization and rhetoric rest. (Not only in science.)

Kuhn metaphor was a great success and his book was an important landmark in philosophy and historiography of science. But taking his views too literally, either to attack them as Weinberg tries to do or, as Lee proposes, to implement them as practical road maps for science are both, in my opinion, bad ideas.

Weinberg’s instincts as a scientists are rather negative towards Kuhn’s and his different analysis of the physics developments that Kuhn based his book on, is very interesting. However, Weinberg’s interpreters Kuhn’s philosophy too literally and his critique is based on this interpretation. This makes his overall argument not so convincing as also his notions of “soft” and “hard” parts of physics; Notions that are even vaguer than the notions Kuhn himself introduced.

Lee interprets Kuhn’s ideas even more literally than Weinberg. Rather than to criticize Kuhn, Lee uses his interpretation of Kuhn as a basis for his ideas how science should be practiced. This leads to his distinction between “seers” and “craftspersons” and to his whole discussion how to encourage and pull off revolutions. The idea of practically basing scientific practices on philosophy of science is misguided, and Lee’s specific suggestions, while bold and interesting, make little sense.

Happy 2007, everybody!

Similarly, Galileo would have caused chaos if the more rational professors had allowed consideration of his radical, disruptive new approach to astronomy (using a telescope):
‘Here at Padua is the principal professor of philosophy whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets through my glass which he pertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not here? What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly! And to hear the professor of philosophy at Pisa labouring before the Grand Duke with logical arguments, as if with magical incantations, to charm the new planets out of the sky.’ - Letter of Galileo to Kepler, 1610, http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0043.html

11. Although a substantial part of Lee’s argument is about sociology there appears to be no real interactions with social scientists.

It could have served the quality of the discussion of sociology if it reflected some discussion or interaction with social scientists. Beside the difficulties in the overall discussion which was my point 15, and the emotional rather than rational discussion, some of Lee’s specific suggestions that can look good at first, are problematic when analyzed carefully. And these problems may be quite familiar to savvy social scientists.

14. Lee’s ideas on revolutionizing universities is not detailed and the hints we get are not promising.

I will consider one example. Suppose that you want to improve the difficult academic careers of what Lee calls “seers” and I prefer to call “dreamers” - people who are involved in very high risk individual original projects. As I said, the main problem is that most of these researchers will fail: If you have 50 scientists working on different approaches for replacement of quantum mechanics, I tend to think that they will all fail to achieve a “real progress”. But even Lee may agree that 49 will fail. Of course, a few of the failed ideas may still lead to useful scientific insights but many of these people will not have anything to show for their efforts.

But let us put that aside, agree that “seers’” academic life should be improved, and consider Lee’s specific suggestion for a 5 year support (with an option to up to 10 years extension). Will this make the situation better for the seers?

Carefully analyzed it appears that most likely it will make it worse! (Lets assume that in these 5-15 years they will get conditions comparable to those in universities.)

The chance of people who work in high-risk projects of the kind Lee encourage to be admitted to a university after 5 years of failure or after 10-15 years of very partial success are very small. Given this, the really brilliant high-risk individuals will try to get a university position anyway, so the quality of people left in Lee’s project will be lower. Moreover, these people will have strong incentive to try to be engaged in “normal” research to increase the their chances for a university position.

Moreover, this program will give a negative incentives for universities to hire “seers” in the first round; they will prefer to wait and hire successful “seers” coming out from Lee’s program later in their careers.

At the end, you may reach a situation where “seers/dreamers” will have even more difficult careers than today and the dreamers-support plan will be just a program for second-rate physicists who cannot get ordinary academic jobs.

Again, there is nothing special here about “seers” in physics. This is a classical case of “affirmative action”, and the insight that separate (terminal) frameworks for “affirmative action” are inferior to affirmative action within the ordinary framework (universities in this case).

What could be a better way to support seers (or dreamers)? There is no way around convincing the academic community (or even even part of the community) either in the general principle of the importance of “seers” or regarding specific individuals.

You want to promote seers? This is what you should do: Identify some brilliant young people who do good, highly original, foundational work, against all advice: differentiate between them, identify the better ones and try to support them in the ordinary university frameworks. Help them to get academic positions, spend time in following and criticizing what they are doing; and when they come up for tenure write a detailed recommendation letter, which tells about the candidate and not about the writer, and if they deserve tenure, give them a break: slant it a little, shamelessly.

10. Talking together about the scientific and social issues including funding is by itself very problematic. Not being sufficiently aware of this difficulty is a mistake.

Personally, I enjoy the many aspects of the debate. But I do not think Lee is careful enough to separate the scientific and non-scientific issues and he is not aware of the difficulties arising from such a mixture. Several of the phenomena Lee referred to as sociological are purely scientific, e.g. I do not see a justification to consider the issue of finiteness of string theory as a sociological issue.

Of course, there are relations between the scientific and sociological aspects, but you better try to understand matters very well separately (each one in the correct wider context) before you try to relate them. (Where can we find an example? Here is one: it takes quite a good understanding of quantum mechanics and gravitation separately before an attempt to study them together makes sense.)

Lee’s own interests as a prominent representative of LQG can also cause a difficulty in interpretation of what he says. The not careful mixture of so many issues and ideas, opens the door to the interpretation that on every issue, scientific, social, ethical or philosophical, you can regard Lee’s position as driven by the interest to get more resources for LQG. I do not share this extreme interpretation and I regard as unfair, but the difficulty it expresses is genuine.

To sum, the mixture, even within individual chapters, of social and scientific issues on the expense of studying each issue in the more general natural context, added to Lee’s own biases and interests, obscure Lee’s argument and reduce its quality.

OK, from my 16 points, 15 down and one more to go, and a juicy one indeed (scientific revolutions).

Before getting into specific points let me make some general remarks about this issue and introduce some useful notions. Let me briefly talk about “goals”, “opportunity costs”, “incentives”, and the tension between rationality of actions and rationality of rules.

1. Goals . I think the vague term “progress in science” can represent the goal which is the basis of discussion, or even more specifically “progress towards answering the fundamental problems of physics” (ignoring my point 7) or “progress towards a sound and correct theory of quantum gravity”. Of course, when it comes to universities, and other academic frameworks/communities, teaching and scholarship are also important goals, and there are others.

2. Opportunity cost. Perhaps the most relevant notion from economics and social science to quite a few aspects of the discussion is that of opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost, is the cost of something in terms of an opportunity forgone (and the benefits that could be received from that opportunity) (Wikipedia)

The whole discussion is to a large extent about opportunity cost. It is not whether it is good to have research in string theory but whether the human, financial and other resources can be better used.

We can practice this notion on two little examples from Lee’s book. Lee mentioned the complaint of string theorist not getting interested quickly enough in “non commutative geometry”. Of course, it is good for string theorists to know and try to use every piece of mathematics (and they come amazingly close). But the “opportunity cost” approach would be: perhaps rather than climbing further on the mountains of Geometry towards the very very new theory of “non commutative geometry”, it is better for string theorists to pay more attention to the large fruitful valleys of Analysis or the mysterious hills of Stochastics, (or Mathematical Logic, or higher Category Theory?…)

Another example is Lee’s suggestion to teach freshmen quantum mechanics which is mentioned in several places in the book. Again, the question is not if this is a good idea that freshmen will know quantum mechanics, but what is the “opportunity cost”.

(While for the fate of string theory, I think we simply do not have enough evidence to call, so I would advice simply to wait several decades, this little question of teaching quantum mechanics in first year university physics, is probably very suitable for a weblog discussion.)

3. Incentives . This is a famous notion. An incentive (again, as Wikipedia tells us) is a name for any factor that provides a motive for a particular course of action.

A little example to practice. Lee compares “peer review” to “jury of one’s peer”:

“This is called peer review. It’s a funny name, because it differs markedly from the notion of jury of one’s peer, which suggests that you are being judged by people just like yourself, who are presumably fair and objective. There are real penalties - prison - juror who conceal a bias”

This is simple example of an incentive: Prison for jurors who conceal a bias provides a strong motive not to conceal a bias. (I suppose a change in this direction in the universities would be truly horrifying. E.g., To “punish” people who “shamelessly slant” their recommendation letters, will give a strong incentive not to write letters at all.)

4. The tension between rationality of actions and rationality of rules. The distinction between rationality of actions and rationality of rules is a familiar but not an entirely standard notion. The basic idea (at least in special cases) is well known under different names. (e.g., “precedences” in law.)

Let’s start with one example regarding to quantum mechanics course for freshmen.

While in Yale Lee’s suggestion for first year quantum mechanics course was rejected by his conservative colleagues, in Harvard the story was different. The dean in Harvard rejected Lee’s initiative out-of-hand without considering its merits because the proposal did not pass through the requisite committees. “‘If we let every teach what they wanted to’ he said ‘we would have educational chaos’”.

The dean followed the rule of not allowing and not even considering teaching initiative without the appropriate standard approval procedure. The dean’s rationale for this rule was the goal to prevent educational chaos. This indeed appears to be a rational point of view.

(Lee argues also against the Harvard dean’s goal, and says: “I am not sure that educational chaos is such a bad idea”. Being aware that siding with a dean is never popular and can be a bad mistake, my opinion is nevertheless that educational chaos is a very bad idea.)

Here is another example of the tension between rationality of actions and rationality of rules: Our nc mentioned the long time it took the scientific community to accept the discovery of the bacteria leading to ulcers. Again conservatism may have led, in this particular case, to some delay in recognizing an important discovery (even to a loss of lives), but overall, as a rule, the conservative and careful approaches in science, and certainly in modern medicine, are very rational.

The last example is also from Lee’s book. This is a rare issue where Lee presents a conservative rather than a radical point of view and it is regarding what Lee calls the “ethics of science”. In short, Lee’s point is that even if you belong to a large dominant group in some field the tradition/rule/ethics of science require that you will support also research in competing directions that you regard unpromising or even very unpromising. This argument can also be seen as an example of the tension between rationality of rules and rationality of specific actions.

“I hope somebody, beyond the line of duty, will take the effort to look at them and tell you (better, on the record in a blog, maybe here) why they can’t work.”

Sigh. Love the scientific objectivity and lack of prejudice about whether ‘my’ ideas will be found useless! Very unbiased. It’s deliberately built like a jigsaw of pieces from empirically defensible fact, due to other people. I didn’t discover spacetime, Newton’s 3rd law, big bang, etc. Put a jigsaw together from facts nobody disputes, and the sum of those facts is absurd because it correctly predicts gravity, cosmology (no retardation of supernovae, predicted ahead of observations and published in 1996), so they do work.

The investigation of ‘pet theories’ outer than those of mainstream awaits the fall of mainstream theory. Naturally that can’t fall because it isn’t falsifiable. It’s not a blog you need to compete with arXiv’s hyping of string theory, it’s a vast number of cited publications:

‘Scientists have thick skins. They do not abandon a theory merely because facts contradict it. … History of science, of course, is full of accounts of how crucial experiments allegedly killed theories. But such accounts are fabricated long after the theory had been abandoned. … What really count are dramatic, unexpected, stunning predictions: a few of them are enough to tilt the balance; where theory lags behind the facts, we are dealing with miserable degenerating research programmes. Now, how do scientific revolutions come about? If we have two rival research programmes, and one is progressing while the other is degenerating, scientists tend to join the progressive programme. This is the rationale of scientific revolutions. … Criticism is not a Popperian quick kill, by refutation. Important criticism is always constructive: there is no refutation without a better theory. Kuhn is wrong in thinking that scientific revolutions are sudden, irrational changes in vision. The history of science refutes both Popper and Kuhn: on close inspection both Popperian crucial experiments and Kuhnian revolutions turn out to be myths: what normally happens is that progressive research programmes replace degenerating ones.’

– Imre Lakatos, Science and Pseudo-Science, pages 96-102 of Godfrey Vesey (editor), Philosophy in the Open, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1974.

I do not think that you really refer to censorship. The rejection of Woit’s book from CUP was not an act of censorship but entirely reasonable (see comment (132)) and the book appeared elsewhere where it was appropriate. I suspect that the rejection of your ideas from PRL was very reasonable and I hope somebody, beyond the line of duty, will take the effort to look at them and tell you (better, on the record in a blog, maybe here) why they can’t work. But your ideas are presented on your homepage and weblog so everybody can read them.

-cvj

A) the evaluation of string theory. These were points 1-5. Point 3 that I discussed first (143) was about finiteness and the work of Mandelstam. Lee responded in (149) and there were many follow ups. Points 4 and 5 (Maldacena conjectures) were raised in (160, 161) and Lee commented on them in (169).

Points 1 and 2 regarding Lee’s overall evaluation of progress in physics in the last quarter of a century are linked in (205)-first link. (Masterclass (18))

B) The matter of pluralism in theoretical physics. My comments (Points 6-8) (pluralism should be studied in a wider context; traditional areas of hep-ph; there is no scientific reason for a unified quantum gravity community) are linked in (205)- second link (masterclass (19)). (Moveon referred to point 7 in (207))

C) The string theory community. Point 9 was presented in (206).

D) Sociology: Point 15 was made in (166) to which Lee responded in (170). The other points on this matter will be addressed next.

E) Philosophy of science, scientific revolutions, and high-risk scientific endeavors. Point 12 (encouraging young scientists to high-risk endeavors) was discussed here in (167) and Lee responded in (170). Point 13 (Attitude towards revolutionary theories by great scientists,) was discussed in (288). (Count referred to it in (291).) The last point 16 (scientific revolutions) will be elaborated last.

Note that for the topics in B), D) and E) string theory is merely an example and, as Clifford said in his original post, this is a place where the natural context of the discussion is much broader. (Which is, in my opinion, quite welcomed.)

Or, come to think of it, be they brilliant revolutions in the making from well-meaning nutcases, or total nonsense from visionaries.

Either way, this is not the place for it.

-cvj

‘I certainly know from experience that … point about the behavior of the gatekeepers is true - I worked out and published an idea that reproduces GR as low-order limit, but, since it is crazy enough to regard the long range forces as somehow deriving from the same source, it was blacklisted from arxiv (CERN however put it up right away without complaint).’

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=128#comment-1932

Despite what you are told, people do look at other ideas. People do champion ideas other than their current favourites, and more and more people are looking at more and more things everyday in the field.

Best,

-cvj

-cvj

(*on second thought…. I should have seen it coming… )

Strawman argument about “obvious nonsense”. Try choosing something that is censored as “obvious nonsense” without anyone even having read it or said what is wrong with it.

By the way, as a kid I used to launch wood and cardboard model rockets and they went higher than metal ones. Wood’s a good material. Provide some calculation to prove it’s definitely better to use metal for rockets! Wooden rockets were used for a long time before metal ones. The latest technology in engineering and maths is not the best just because its the newest. That’s just as much a logical fallacy as ad hominem arguments.