sorry for not answering comments here for a while – I was distracted by other columns.

#22,23: Andrea, Dimitri, I agree: as all generalizations, the one about americans being more obsessed with sexism is bound to be flawed. I would argue there is a small, but detectable, bias towards it.

#24 etc:

Tripitaka, I think it is a very good topic for a separate post – I wish I could write a suitable introduction to it. I will see what I can do.

Anomalous, I think we have indeed made huge progress in our tools, but in the face of that, we have only completed a picture of fermions and gauge bosons we knew how to paint. Much in the same way we are going to find a SM higgs boson. On the theoretical side I do not see any fundamental advancement in the understanding of the world, but I may be underestimating a few things… And my belief also is due to the fact I do not believe in string theory and I doubt SUSY is correct.

Tony, I share some of your concerns. I think Alejandro answers very well here, with regards to why theorists follow the mainstream.

Cheers,
T.

Maybe the “important physicists … distinguished colleagues” are not blacklisted and therefore do not need the web/blogosphere to present their ideas. Maybe they have flunkies/underlings to propagate their ideas there. Maybe anomalous cowherd, who claims to have “experience with distinguished colleagues” might know about such things.

It is interesting that in the 20 years or so since Feynman said

“… I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. … I don’t like it that they’re not calculating anything. … why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers … have no explanations in these string theories – absolutely none! … “

the “… “important physicists” … distinguished colleagues … work[ing] 12 or more hours a day on their physics …” for the past two decades or so have failed to calculate the numbers that Feynman wanted to see.

It is even more interesting that the “… “important physicists” … distinguished colleagues …” are so busy “… work[ing] 12 or more hours a day on their physics …” that they don’t take time to try to understand physics models (available on the web/blogosphere) that do calculate those numbers.

Maybe that is the worst Trouble with Theoretical High-Energy Physics.

Tony Smith

“Dear Anomalous, it is true we expect a lot from the future experiments, but the feeling that things have not made huge progress in the last 30 years is tangible. Especially in the theoretical side.”

Dear Professor Dorigo
I find this statement surprising. At least on the experimental side I think that we have made amazing progress over the last 30 years. How we’ve done on the theoretical side will to some degree be determined by our future experiments, but here also I think that great progress has been made. I don’t have time to get into this today [you can see a quick list of problems I think we've made progress on in my original post], but perhaps we can return to this discussion later.

“ALL the physicists who give assent-by-silence to such anonymous ad hominem attacks etc “have no shame”, and the important ones are the important ones.”

What makes you assume that people who don’t want to get dragged into flame-fest sessions, agree with ANY of the points of view expressed by the flame-fest participants? And what makes you think that most “important physicists” even read blogs? My experience with distinguished colleagues is that they work 12 or more hours a day on their physics, not getting sucked into blog flame-fests.

With regard to your list of 3 examples of why “physics is in trouble”, it seems to me that each one of them has to do with problems in the american funding system, rather than with the global progress of physics as a whole.
1 -” the SSC debacle” happened 15 years ago. The LHC at its design luminosity will largely cover what the SSC would have at its design luminosity. [Parenthetically, having funded and constructed a facility to actually do this physics, and that is open to scientists from all over the world, europeans might be getting somewhat tired of all the whining about it not being the SSC].
2 – “what is to come after the LHC” will clearly depend on what is discovered AT the LHC. Only after the LHC finds the threshold for new physics will we be in a position to commit to a facility to explore that physics in detail, whether it’s ILC, CLIC, a “Wake-Field” accelerator, or whatever. Our task now is to successfuly exploit the LHC to its full physics potential, so that we will be in a position to make informed decisions about what we wish to do next.
3- If American funding agencies are making arbitrary decisions about threshold costs for dark energy experiments, I find that surprising, but at the end of the day it is an american political problem, not a crisis in the global progress of physics.

I should add that I do share your concern over the state of the american accelerator-based particle physics program; I noted that in my original comment ["True, I’d like to see concrete plans for refurbishing the American accelerator based particle physics program"]. And I am really concerned that future scientific missions [such as a dark energy mission, a dedicated CMB polarization experiment, or participation in LISA] will be sacrificed to support the Bush administration’s push to Mars. But global progress in physics doesn’t depend on any one region, and is active and ongoing.

You’ll find people like that all over the world. It’s just that Americans tend to be most vocal about it.

This makes me remind of a very hilarious essay by David Foster Wallace about a big fair in rural Illinois.
He was born in rural Illinois, where he had grown up until he left at the age of 18 to live in the East Coast. He went to this Illinois fair with a local female friend, whom he knew since childhood.
He was shocked by the following episode during the fair: his friend had a ride on a rollercoaster; the two operators of the rollercoaster commented loudly about her nice appearance, then operated the rollercoaster in such a way to stop it in a position where they could peep under her skirt (and commented loudly and laughing about that).
Her friend was very happy about the ride because it had been a lot of fun; David Foster Wallace was shocked and asked her whether she was aware of what the two guys had been doing. She answered yes, but that she didn’t care at all: she had had fun, that was all that mattered.
A discussion followed about the very different reaction that the average East Coast woman would have had (she would have felt violated even in a much less offensive situation).

So, maybe it’s not so true that political correctness is a standard feature of modern anglosaxon culture.

now, US bashing is entertaining, and I generally agree with your statement, however I have to say we also owe them a lot, so I will refrain from further commenting (I have to play it humble for a while now).

Cheers,
T.

Tony, I agree – the sociological implications are interesting. I think Lubos is prone to make tranchant statements based on very small average differences. Anyway, I think the instruction level is one of the strongest discriminants. So an investigation among people visiting this blog, divided in countries of provenance, may only detect subtle differences which may be more evident in the world at large.

Anonymous, saying “she is convinced that she is the next Einstein” is very annoying to me.

Tony I perfectly agree, anonymous commenters doing ad hominem attacks are the filth of blogging.

Dear Anomalous, it is true we expect a lot from the future experiments, but the feeling that things have not made huge progress in the last 30 years is tangible. Especially in the theoretical side.

Amanda, sure… Although I know 80 year old guys who are excited by 80 year old gals.

OK….but by the same reasoning he also find that 80 year old women are made of the same flesh too. They must be *really* charming.

How should I be able to present an “exact…” list,
when some of them comment as anonymous cowards,
at least one of whom (the subject of my previous comment) is (if believed) a spokesperson for “really all” “members of the field” ?

ALL the physicists who give assent-by-silence to such anonymous ad hominem attacks etc “have no shame”, and the important ones are the important ones.

anomalous cowherd also asked “What makes [me] think that physics is in trouble?”

As to experiment, here are 3 examples:
1 – The first major trouble I will cite is the SSC debacle, which set back high energy particle physics many years.
In its stead, the Tevatron had made very useful observations, and we hope (barring further explosions etc) that over the next few years very useful observations will come from LHC, but they are far short of what might have been seen if the SSC had been done right.
2 – The next major trouble is what is to come after the LHC. The ILC is a possibility, but it is by no means a done deal, and if ends up like the SSC it is hard to see how particle physics will advance experimentally.
3 – With respect to Dark Energy experiments, when I suggested some experiments that might cost less than 500,000 USdollars, I was told that the relevant funding agencies would not even consider any projects costing less than 20,000,000 US dollars. Such a way of thinking can easily lead to big money-pit projects (such as hot fusion) that live forever as unproductive self-sustaining bureaucratic monsters, while cheap experiments that might bring major insights are ignored.

As to theory, one example was stated by Feynman almost 20 years ago, and it is still accurate:
“… I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. … I don’t like it that they’re not calculating anything. … why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers … have no explanations in these string theories – absolutely none! … “,
while
models that provide calculations of such things and others like the Dark Energy : Dark Matter : Ordinary Matter ratio not only are not fairly evaluated, but are disparaged and some even blacklisted.

As to both experiment and theory, they have become big business with a lot of money (cf. the 20,000,000 USdollar minimum for acceptable Dark Energy experiments) and Burton Richter’s remarks in hep-ex 0001012 now seem relevant to both theory and experiment:
“… we … have a bureaucratic overlay to the science with committees that decide on … speakers, paper publications, etc. The participating scientists are imprisoned by golden bars of consensus …. “.

Tony Smith

“maybe one of the Troubles with Physics is that so many IMPORTANT PHYSICISTS have no shame”

OK, you’re probably trolling, but I’ll bite. I have two questions:

[1] What makes you think that physics is in trouble? In the coming year the LHC starts taking data and both PLANCK and GLAST go into orbit. The JPARC facility starts experiments in a year. We have a new deep undergound facility for passive experiments [SNOLAB] constructed and waiting for its initial round of experiments. LIGO has reached design sensitivity. RHIC is giving exciting and unanticipated results. Super-BELLE looks likely to be approved. We have new synchrotron facilities being built at DESY and SLAC to do materials research. The ITER (I think that’s the acronym) plamsa fusion facility has been approved for construction at Cadarache. True, I’d like to see concrete plans for refurbishing the American accelerator based particle physics program, but on the whole global physics is robustly healthy. Theory is in happy ferment as well: astroparticle physics, BSM model building, analytic and numerical solution of QCD, quantum phase transitions, theory of high-Tc Cuprates, nuclear effective field theory,
string gravity, mesoscale physics, cosmological structure formation, numerical relativity, and quantum computing, have all seen spectacular theoretical advances in the last decade. So what is it precisely that makes you think that there are “Troubles with Physics” [capitalized no less!].

[2] Who exactly are these “IMPORTANT PHYSICISTS” who “have no shame”? To be non-specific on this point would be an ugly and unsubstantiated smear on many brilliant and hardworking scientists.

The first statement by Anonymous is not only an ad hominem attack, but also represents that “really all” “members of the field” don’t agree with Louise’s physics.
Since Louise makes no secret of who she is or where she is or what she thinks, it is quite unfair and indeed cowardly for ad hominem attacks to be made anonymously.
It is also unfair for an anonymous commenter to claim to speak for “really all” “members of the field”, without stating any basis whatsoever for doing so.

The second statement by Anonymous is also flawed, because it does not state explicitly what “modification of general relativity” is “plainly inconsistent with any of the main tests of GR”
nor does it give even one concrete example of such inconsistency.

If a commenter wants to hide behind anonymity, the commenter should avoid ad hominem attacks, claims to speak for others, and allegations of inconsistency with observations without explicit statement of the relevant facts.
Any anonymous commenter who fails to meet those standards should be ashamed
but
maybe one of the Troubles with Physics is that so many IMPORTANT PHYSICISTS have no shame.

It is even more troubling that the community at large seems to be OK with that lack of shame.

Tony Smith

PS – Consider one of Louise’s ideas, that the speed of light varies,
and also consider the paper hep-th 0208122 by J. W. Moffat (Perimenter Institute), who said there:
“… We argue that there are several attractive features of … Variiable Speed of Light … VSL theory compared to standard inflationary theory, and that it provides an alternative cosmology with potentially different predictions …”.
See also gr-qc 0705.4507 by Magueijo and Moffat.

Obviously, Magueijo and Moffat are counterexamples refuting the claim of Anonymous that “really all” “members of the field” don’t agree with Louise’s ideas.

For one, she claims she has solved the dark energy problem, and that her modification of general relativity is close to being tested. Her “modification” is plainly inconsistent with any of the main tests of GR, e.g. supernovae, CMB, geodesic paths in weak gravitational lensing, data from the Hulse-Taylor binary, etc., etc. The world has repeatedly tried to convince her of this but she is somehow convinced she is the next Einstein, despite all evidence being to the contrary.

Not to say that that all somehow makes her a less worthy person at all — however we do work hard in science to understand reality, not just our own little world or dreamland. The truth is sometimes a difficult thing.

That is interesting.
My personal counterexample is based on the precise wording of Lubos’s conjecture “born in the anglo-Saxon world” which is true in my case,
as opposed to “being anglo-Saxon” which is only partly true for me, as I am genetically/culturally not pure anglo-Saxon.

Maybe an interesting question would be which sociological groups (including education, religion, and all that) show significant polarization of opinion about Tommaso’s description of Lisa.

I think that such studies are now commonly done in USA political campaigns, with two outstandingly successful examples being Karl Rove’s use of polarizing hot-button issues to get enough votes for Bush in 2000 and 2004 so that Florida and Ohio electors could (in connection with other circumstances such as Supreme Court votes in the case of Florida 2000 and electronic voting machines in the case of Ohio 2004) be obtained for Bush.

Tony Smith

I was thinking the exact same thing, but I didn’t dare say.

Lubos, despite what Tony writes below, your conjecture is largely correct.

Carl, thank you for the link to the women chess championship… It made for a nice distraction from this endless arguing on sexism.

Jack, you will get old if you are lucky, and you will find that 40 year old women are made of the same flesh that caused your erection 20 years earlier. They lost some of their beauty in exchange for their charme. You won’t be disappointed much, especially since you will still have a shot at those 20yo babes.

Cheers,
T.