Advice to a Senior Physicist
Luboš Motl says that:
The perp in this case is a Robert Matthews, writing behind a subscription wall in the Financial Times, so I have no clue as to what he said, but it clearly provoked LM as well as his senior colleague. The post itself is pretty much the usual, long on insult and short on specifics, but my real point here is addressed to the "senior physicist."
Why exactly was it you gave this to LM? Luboš, of course, is a very clever fellow, but he also believes practically every crackpot notion known to the modern world - or at least the right wing ones. If you want to discredit some writing, sending LM to do the hit is *not* the way to win hearts and minds. Of course Lumo did say she (or he) was not a string theorist so ...
The anti-stringers are are starting to get more vocal.
I'm inclined to think the issue is mainly beside the point. The LHC will be built, and results will either give some encouragement to ST or not. If not, ST will probably go to sleep (with the fishes!) for quite some time.
A senior physicist who is not a string theorist has sent me a piece of text that he or she called "a tendentious, malicious attack on scientists and through that on science itself".
The perp in this case is a Robert Matthews, writing behind a subscription wall in the Financial Times, so I have no clue as to what he said, but it clearly provoked LM as well as his senior colleague. The post itself is pretty much the usual, long on insult and short on specifics, but my real point here is addressed to the "senior physicist."
Why exactly was it you gave this to LM? Luboš, of course, is a very clever fellow, but he also believes practically every crackpot notion known to the modern world - or at least the right wing ones. If you want to discredit some writing, sending LM to do the hit is *not* the way to win hearts and minds. Of course Lumo did say she (or he) was not a string theorist so ...
The anti-stringers are are starting to get more vocal.
I'm inclined to think the issue is mainly beside the point. The LHC will be built, and results will either give some encouragement to ST or not. If not, ST will probably go to sleep (with the fishes!) for quite some time.