The self-appointed science gurus

Sean Carroll recently tweeted this:

I could ‘t help giving him a straight answer. I actually like Sean Carroll, but I hate how he and others – think of John Gribbins, for example – self-appoint themselves as the only ‘gurus’ who are entitled to say something about grand theories or other ‘big ideas’: everyone else (read: all non-believers in QFT) are casually dismissed as ‘crackpot scientists’.

In fact, a few weeks before he had sent out a tweet promoting his ideas on the next ‘big ideas’, so I couldn’t help reminding him of the tweet above. 🙂

This is funny, and then it isn’t. The facts are this:

1. The ‘new physics’ – the quantum revolution – started almost 100 years ago but doesn’t answer many fundamental questions (simply think about explaining spin and other intrinsic properties of matter-particles here).
2. Geniuses like Einstein, Lorentz, Dirac and even Bell had serious doubts about the approach.
3. Historical research shows theories and scientists were severely biased: see Dr. Consa’s review of quantum field theory in this regard.

I am very sorry, Dr. Carroll. You are much smarter than most – and surely much smarter than me – but here you show you are also plain arrogant. It’s this arrogance that has prevented a creative way out of the mess that fundamental physics finds itself in today. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging !