On the decay of high-level physics into crackpotism

My initial dream was to become particle physicist. But it finally looks like a bad idea; better may be to avoid theoretical physics altogether. Here is why.

1. Hiding one's own weaknesses (to remain stalled in a field such as superstrings where almost anything serious has been said and there is no way to advance, or to develop other ideas with comparable weaknesses without admitting it, or plainly tell nonsensical bullshit)
2. Criticizing the weaknesses of others. There can be much to say, it's easy ...

"In recent years though, some theorists who definitely understand and have made contributions to modern physics have started promoting research which looks depressingly like the typical sad examples of “unconventional physics”. Many of the products of the ongoing multiverse mania fit into this category. Lubos is getting quite worried to see that a very talented and well-known leader of the string theory community, Erik Verlinde, seems to be engaging in this sort of research, and getting positive attention for it. Within a month of its appearance, Verlinde’s “Entropic Force” paper has already generated a dozen or so preprints from other physicists on the same topic. It could easily end up being the most influential (in the sense of heavily referenced) paper of 2010. Seeing this coming from a string theorist he admires is worrying Lubos and his correspondents." " I don’t understand why a smart, capable scientist is putting out this sort of paper, just as I don’t understand why a lot of other smart, capable people pursue multiverse pseudo-science."

"What I find disturbing is how quickly people are jumping on the topic. I mean, look at this, it’s a matter of weeks! The thing goes through the blogs, is in New Scientist, and so on, and so on. I mean, really, what’s this?"

"Its not just formal theory that is having quality control problems. A large portion of the phenomenology community spends it’s time shamelessly chasing the statistically insignificant experimental anomaly du jour. Some phenomenologists I know have privately indicated disgust at the situation. I’m not sure exactly how Lee Smolin can be blamed for this, but there must be a way, because he is the devil. But citations for crappy papers are better than no citations for crappy papers not written, so it will continue to get worse before it gets better."

"— I believe [Lubos Molt] does physics a disservice by ranting and spewing bile on research programs outside his own field.
— However much vitriol he expresses them with, his opinions represent virtually to the letter the mainstream view, and this is really all that should matter"

There is also quite an amount of crackpotism in the web site by Samy Maroun, sponsor of the center for quantum physics where some physics celebrities are working : Penrose, Smolin, Rovelli...
Penrose is a famous case of a once good physicist turned crackpot. Rovelli, other great figure of Loop Quantum Gravity with Smolin, and who co-authored a crackpot article with Samy Maroun, also practices crackpotism in philosophical aspects of mathematics. His "challenge" is something I precisely work to answer by my site, as I work to focus on the most important concepts at the foundation of maths and show their elegance (natural simplicity and at the same time, generality). But I guess he won't be interested to know my answer; he only cared to proudly share one-way his ignorance about the possible answers to his challenge.

Other link : Physics Crackpots: "physics conferences, seminars and symposiums tend to attract a small, but quite visible contingent of physics crackpots"

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""It is a huge mistake to theorize before one has data. Inevitably, one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts." Sherlock Holmes.
Many "scientists" had forgotten this basic objective scientific principle: People promoting String Theory as a "scientific" theory, or people talking about Multiverses, or other talking about post-empirical Science, etc."

Philosophers of science are the main ones guilty of theorizing in the absence of data. Not even that the data would not exist, as it does, but that they are too lazy to inform themselves about it. In particular I once attended a philosophy seminar about the theoretical possibilities of determinism or indeterminism, and the whole discourse was based on some a priori range of possible universes, or possible universal laws, but never raising the question whether the actually known laws of physics (namely quantum physics) fit in this range (of course, philosophers not being physicists, it is not their job to learn what the laws of physics look like). Similarly, philosophers teach about the "causal closure of physics" regardless that quantum mechanics tells the exact opposite, they put forward the argument for it by the "conservation of energy" referring for this to an article that reports how the conservation of energy precisely does NOT imply this, and keep endlessly speculating about the existence of models of consistent mathematical theories ignoring that this existence is already ensured by the Completeness theorem. Now how can you blame physicists for theorizing in the absence of new data beyond what is already explained by current physics ? We do give them fortunes for the LHC to run after the only hypothetical chance to provide new data with that money, and the only thing sure is that it has no chance to give any benefit to the world except for the curiosity of the very few physicists who can understand such high-level physics. Now if that is not enough data for doing more theory then what do you want the existing population of theoretical physicists paid by public funds to work on, or do you think they should be fired or forcefully re-oriented to other fields of research, then which ones and how ?

"Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years.
Physicists face stagnation if they continue to treat the philosophy of science as a joke."

Physicists face stagnation just because they already succeeded to discover essentially everything worth knowing and that could be discovered in their field. Philosophers trying to promote their stuff to physicists in such ways are like a child who always lived on the beach trying to threaten by phone a mountain climber who already climbed since long and now lives on the top of Mount Everest, that he will stagnate not succeeding to climb higher if... now you can already see below that article some other people's replies pointing out the vacuity of her argument. Now my view here would be rather : since we already exhausted most possibilities of usefulness of research in fundamental physics, shouldn't we stop fancying about it all and re-orient our best minds to different and more useful fields of research for mankind ? like, when the Titanic is about to sink, is there really nothing better to do on it than keep trying to play the best music there ? that is the real philosophical question I see worth asking. As of course for example (contrary to a few people's ridiculous dreams), no more discoveries in fundamental physics will help us finding better energy sources to save the planet...

Table of contents : Foundations of physics