“Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
“Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.”
(from “The Hunting of the Snark, An Agony in 8 Fits” by Lewis Carroll)
Sabine Hossenfelder is a German woman with a doctorate in theoretical physics and a YouTube channel full of videos that discuss all manner of scientific and engineering subjects. Her area of research is “analog models of gravity.” So, she’s trying to visualize things like black holes and think up tests to add to our understanding of these outlandish phenomena. And she’s an obvious girl nerd.
What I like about her popular work (YouTube videos) is that she has no fear of exposing just how dysfunctional modern day physics has become. From dark matter and dark energy to string theory, to futile attempts by particle physicists to invent extraneous particles and then waste untold millions of dollars proving they don’t exist, she exposes the transparent mediocrity and obvious academic make-work that these pseudoscientists are engaging in. They are the hunters of the that altogether mythical snark.
And that brings me to this video. Sabine chronicles the last fifty years of mythical particles that have been proposed and have failed to appear. She describes how the creators of these unicorn particles keep them alive by moving the goal posts whenever the experiments fail to confirm their existence. And finally, she shows how this form of “science” is basically worthless because it has no chance of asking the right questions needed to extend our knowledge. She uses a couple of graphs with data and then the extrapolations associated with these junk science predictions to show how truly worthless this half century of make-work particle physics has been.
It is my belief that the only way to bring rigor back to theoretical physics is to use corporal punishment for failures in achieving successful experimental results. I’m not talking about executions or amputations. Nothing barbaric. I’m talking about caning, possibly flogging. No cat o’nine tails, nothing over five lashes. Barely enough to draw blood. All very civilized and calibrated to bring about the desired results. And I’ll be fair. The physicists can decide whether he’d prefer losing his tenure or being publicly lashed. What could be fairer than that?
All kidding aside, scientific research, not only in this country but throughout the western world, has been stagnating and falling into disrepute. In the social sciences it has degenerated into gobbledygook with the results of the majority of research papers being unreproducible. Doctorates in sociology and psychology are now essentially worthless. Even in the “hard” sciences like physics and chemistry but especially in pharmaceutical research progress at answering fundamental problems has ground to a halt.
So, it’s very refreshing for someone in the academic world to be out there declaring that the emperor has no clothes. Now that’s not to say I agree with every one of her videos. She had a presentation about hydrogen as a fuel, the conclusions of which I completely disagreed with. But she at least lays out a lot of the facts and that allows an informed viewer to judge her opinion based on them. Kudos to Sabine.
On the more general front of scientific research today, all of this confirms something that has become clear. Government money, especially in the United States has turned academia into a racket. Research is a bottomless pit of money that funds unqualified “scientists” to waste resources without any hope of finding the results they are supposedly pursuing. All they accomplish is creating a bureaucracy of people defending their paychecks via government grants.
Other than weapons research the United States government needs to get out of the research business. If they want to incentivize scientific progress let them offer large monetary prizes for successful solutions to practical problems in the engineering and science realms, like the fabulous “cure for cancer” we’re always hearing is right around the corner. Even if the results are more incremental than this at least we would stop incentivizing fraud. Until then we will continue to hear about the latest search for the particle equivalent of the snark.
Wow, truth hurts sometimes. lets start with the “Climate Scientists”.
Fake science and junk science as far as the eye can see. Climate change, mRNA vaccines, pediatric transgender malpractice, stalled out basic research in almost every field, failure of the electric grid due to forced dependence on “green” technologies. You name it.
Bravo!
Glad you like it.
She was 100% correct about the deficiency of H as a fuel source.
I think the jury is still out on what we should use to fuel cars if and when fossil fuels run out. As long as we have a robust, affordable power source (possibly fission plants) we can produce hydrogen very easily. But for that matter we can produce methane or even octane. The specifics of the fuel depend on a lot of factors. Hydrogen definitely has problems but so do all fuels including gasoline and diesel. As long as reality dictates the choice I’m content to let the process evolve. The problem is that climate scientists are driving the process… Read more »
As the article mentions, scientific research has become a racket for fraud perpetrated by those who could care less about scientific results. These “scientists” have learned to game the system inorder to produce a constant, and steady stream of government grants inorder to enrich themselves, instead of actually furthering any scientific knowledge. How important is knowing why a Moroccan Spider Monkey eats a banana instead of an apple inorder to justify a government grant for a couple of Million dollars?
Very clearly stated, Big John. Imagine the reductions in our deficit if we had a government that wanted to end this ridiculous gravy train. I’ll even ignore for now the military R&D. That at least has an excuse to exist in some form. But as you say, fruit preferences in Moroccan Spider Monkeys. Why are we paying for that? Just a racket.
Researching non-practical entities is and always has been a waste of resources that could be used for the benefits of society. Apparently these pseudo-scientists believe wasting money and time is only for their betterment of lofty ideas that have no worth to others. As with all proposals for funding, if they funded and they fail in their initial goal they should not be resupplied with more funding from the public. Instead these pseudo-scientists should be removed from their lofty positions and work for the private sector. Since the private sector seldom puts up with wasting money on unobtainable and failed… Read more »
Yes indeed Mark. My least favorite researchers are the biologists who create a different subspecies of leopard frog in every pond so they can claim there is an endangered species living in your koi pond and in that way send they can the gestapo to haul you away if you try and build a gazebo in your backyard. These people are a cancer.