EclectEcon

Regular readers of EclectEcon know that I have a soft spot in my heart for string theory because it led me to think of the universe in a different way. That hasn't stopped me, though, from wondering about the implications of string theory and how they might be tested. On that score, one of my semi-regular blog-reads is Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit, who has recently written a book with the same name that is critical of string theory. It looks as if some string theorists might be extremely upset with his views. His full story is here, chronicaling reviews and counter-reviews and numerous allegations about them at Amazon.com. Here is a brief excerpt:

I’d really much rather ignore the activities of Lubos Motl, but his unethical behavior recently has sunk to new lows, and it seems necessary to point this out and encourage others to take appropriate action.

... Lubos still has up on his blog an offer to pay people $20 for writing bad reviews of my book [on Amazon.com; it appears that the offer is no longer there as I write this - EE]. I’ve complained to people in the Harvard physics department that this kind of professional behavior by one of its faculty members is unethical and not the sort of thing protected by academic freedom. I’ve also pointed out to them that Lubos regularly publicly claims that his colleagues share his views (most recently in the Amazon review where he goes on about Smolin visiting “us”, and what “we” “mainstream physicists” think). ... I’ve seen no evidence whatsoever that anyone in the string theory group at Harvard has a problem with his behavior in defending string theory. This is also true of the larger string theory community, which remains almost unanimously (Aaron Bergman is the one exception I can think of) unwilling to publicly criticize Lubos’s tactics. A common recent defense of string theory against its critics is that its proponents hold power because they have triumphed in the “marketplace of ideas.” It’s not a pretty sight to see how this triumph is being defended now that there are other voices in the marketplace.

Motl's review is here on his own blog. Also see The Trouble with Physics, which one reviewer said might more aptly be titled, "The Trouble with Physicists", which Tyler Cowen also recommends.

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