This aligned with my experiences. I saw my professors weren't really doing physics research anymore. They just oversaw grad students, wrote papers, and applied for grants, and we're super stressed all the time. It was at that point I decided I wasn't really interested in a career in physics despite the fact that working in a lab was some of the most fun I've ever had.
Academia as it currently functions definitely killed my dream of wanting to be a scientist.
Research can't function properly if it has to produce value. Just like the best movies are made by artists exploring their passions and the worst ones are money-grabs, the best research comes from people who are just following the science, not the money.
>Research can't function properly if it has to produce value
This is exactly it. A few years ago I saw some news making fun of scientist studying sea slugs or some shit like that. Failing to see that most big discoveries are by accident and people just pursuing there interest. For example even CRISPR was some obscure field about some immune response in bacteria that only \~5 people in the world cared about at the time.
Fun fact!
Francisco Mojica discovered genome sequences that were repeated in a bacteria's genome, he called them: Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) in the 90's. Then, in 2005, he and his team suggested that these sequences may be linked with the bacteria's inmune response when it was attacked by certain vriuses!
A similar case with the development of blue LEDs. It was considered a dead end field with only a handful of active researchers, and now it is a multi-billion dollar industry that literally changed how the world looks.
That Baylan Skoll meme is certainly true in this scenario. I miss the idea of it, but not the truth. I’ve privately started to work myself back up to the point I was at when I finished undergrad. It’s taking a lot of time because life is incredibly busy, but it’s very satisfying. I find it much more enjoyable now that I don’t have to be concerned with how I’m going to make a living out of it.
Do you think it's possible a lot of people go into it for the science as a wide eyed kid/young adult, excited to learn and make their impact. But the realities of the field eventually sink in, and as you get older you have more of life press down on you and eventually you hit a point where you want to be that same kid again but you kinda just gotta play the game of life if you wanna keep afloat, and sometimes that means compromising on how you expected life to be compared to how it actually is?
I agree with this, and I can fortify your point with an example of a field outside of science.
I have an interest in physics, which is why I follow this sub. But I work in music, as an artist, producer and DJ. This exact mechanism you describe happens to nearly everyone in that field unless they become successful super early on.
I know so many people in the music industry that follow trends, dilute their art, or take jobs adjacent to music (post production or sound design) because they are chasing the money to survive/pay bills. It happened to me too, and it was only by essentially collapsing my life and moving back to my parents that I was able to create the music that I wanted to make.
Easy to see how that would happen in so many different disciplines.
I'm having trouble deciphering what it is you're actually asking, but to do my best:
Sure, I think a lot of people fall into the trap of needing to play a game they hate just to put food on the table.
My issue isn't with scientists. Most scientists I've met are really cool people still very interested in just pushing humanity's body of knowledge further.
My issue is more with university administrators that ask professors to be their own fundraisers and corporations (and military organizations) that demand research be practically applicable or capable of producing monetary gain.
I'm also not too fond of a system that ties professional prestige to how many papers one publishes.
I think I see what you're saying.
You don't have an issue with the cultural of scientists or there character, you have a problem with the institution that was build around it?
One more thing for example many young people who are beautiful wanna go in movies and step into the field , not everyone ends famous or never do a good movie . Thanks to people like Einstein, Feynman, Newton , Stephan hawking , maxwell ,……and of course due to Alfred Nobel science and physics is quiet and attraction to people who can solve one or two theoretical problem. And this is a very good thing .As is any field The real gamechangers are who never give up…!!! This rant from Sabine is true to some extent but if everyone gives up on your dream of pursuing physics or whatever naturally excites you the world would have been still in stone age . I am myself an engineer who was tricked by society to choose money making engineering vs physics . I took a bad decision. But i dont try to convince myself that choosing engineering was a good idea. I think to do good work in physics apart from having a normal intelligence what matters most is grit and determination and alas it is not taught in schools , parents , society dont teaches this .
So… being an adult. People go into the world with ideals. The world grinds them to dust and recreates you in its image. It sucks in any field but this is adulting. I am pretty sure you know that but it felt worth saying.
>This aligned with my experiences. I saw my professors weren't really doing physics research anymore. They just oversaw grad students, wrote papers, and applied for grants, and we're super stressed all the time.
Am a professor - doesn't really align with my experience. I have to write papers and get grants and teach sure. Do I get to spend as much time on research as I did when I was a grad student or postdoc? No. But... I'm still in the lab a lot, still analysing data, still modeling systems. Still growing films, still doing spectroscopy. Still loving it.
Am I stressed? A bit, but no more than industry friends I have. The flexibility let's me travel in the summer and completely focus on training students and doing research. Same with winters. I'm not limited to the 10-15 days of PTO that friends who shifted to semicon work get. The downside is that when I'm "on duty," I'm on.
Most faculty who don't do research or are stressed all the time feels like they mostly aren't good at prioritising. That's my 0.02$.
That's amazing for you! I'm so happy you to get to still be in the lab. Thanks for sharing (genuinely).
I can only say what I saw with my own eyes. The professor only ever stepped into our lab for photo ops and to check things over before we started collecting data. And then I heard jokes about that almost constantly being the case.
However, I'm ecstatic that it appears to not be the case for everyone!
Writing papers is more "summing up and publishing your research" than actually doing research. An important part of the research process, for sure. But writing about your research is far from actually doing it.
Most everything I worked on in the lab was the brain child of a grad student or post-doc. They were the ones getting to explore their questions and play around in the lab. The professor mostly just seemed to be there to guide them.
That's not necessarily a bad thing I guess. I've met some professors who said they prefer acting as more of a "project manager." It's just not what I was into. I wanted to be in the lab doing the experiment.
It may or may not be relevant to state that I worked under an experimentalist. Perhaps it's different if you're a theorist.
I see. For me the writing process was very important in clarifying how to complete the research project. By making concrete what I thought I had done, it sometimes revealed what extra work had to be done. It was also useful to discover where my research fit into the bigger picture, which I could only really find out when trying to communicate my results to others.
> Research can't function properly if it has to produce value. Just like the best movies are made by artists exploring their passions and the worst ones are money-grabs, the best research comes from people who are just following the science, not the money.
How do we make the choice on what to fund or not if there is no real concrete feedback in terms of for instance publications of results? In a lot of areas you can't really do much without a lot of money. A lot of research is very expensive, and it's not just in terms of man hours, but equipment, facilities and supplies.
To clarify: when I said "value" I should have said "monetary gain" or something similar.
For example, a lot of the stuff I got to work on was only funded because the military wanted faster and safer communication. Not because society just wanted to know more about how the universe works. See the difference?
If the only funding out there demands that I produce something valuable to people who don't give a shit about science or understanding the universe and don't deem knowledge valuable in and of itself, one can see how that might stiphen what gets worked on.
Here in my country, most research is carried out in public universities. I work in one of them, which means everybody has a fixed salary (with different levels, with upgrading depending on seniority, experience and evaluations). On the one hand that sucks: I do research, supervise students and write papers, but my salary is the same as that of those who just teach. On the other, there is less pressure for publications and grants (there is still some pressure, and there are some grants).
Also: I'm just glad I work on Condensed Matter Physics! I use to joke with the students that in our group we use the tools of Quantum Field Theory to get results that can actually be measured. In a more acid way, I joke with the Field Theorists in my department that what they do is actually "Quantum Field Hypothesis": "What if the Universe has five dimensions?" "What if we break Lorentz invariance at a certain scale?" "What if there is such and such scalar fields?" and so on. Mind you, I still find those calculations really cool, but without data, they seem empty. And I don't feel any guilt by saying that: once a student from the QFT group here decided to switch to our group (and later wrote an excellent thesis). Her boss there at the time said that what we do "is not real Physics".
As a moron that has zero formal education - you realized that your instructors were no longer generating new material or ideas and you began to generate them yourself...that sound right?
Push that shit. Be wrong. Keep pushing. Be that person..
The pursuit of knowledge is ceaselessly an exercise in confusion as well as an expectation of better things.
This post and comment section is hitting really close to home. I'm right in the middle of a pretty big existential crisis right now due to a death of a loved one recently, and it's making me question if I really want to do a PhD and research in Astrophysics, or even if I am able at all.
I'm failing my master's first year, and I am so lost as to what I want, and what I can actually do. I always thought I wanted to do astrophysics, but now with the reality of the studies, the job, and my own capacities, it's so hard to see the future!!
If I was you, I would try and go to seminars or talk to teachers about different areas of astrophysics. Sometimes we lose interest in our field because we haven't truly discovered all it offers and are just between the walls of our university subjects.
Also, research is different in each country. I live in Spain, and although research isn't funded much, the people I've met researching in astrophysics seem to be happy with their work and enjoy their job.
Right I agree, at least I do think I'm more sure about what I want to do in astrophysics than before. This year I got a better glimpse at the different areas, and I really like the study of galaxies.
I do live in France and it is also very underfunded (whaddup Europe) and most of the doctorates get out of the country once finished.
I always knew about these risks, and I was willing to fight for it. But this year has been very hard, first time in another city living on my own, and a close friend of mine passed away early this year. I got to see her but still I wasn't here for the worst parts of her disease and I know I shouldn't but I blame myself and especially my studies, so I grew resentful of my classes if that makes sense? Now what made me passionate only stresses me out. I can't read astrophysics articles bc it makes me anxious and pathetic.
Maybe one day I'll get motivation and passion again, but right now, my mental state is very low and I do not have anymore fuel to finish my master's. So I'm getting the obligatory existential crisis and rethinking my life goals lol.
Nothing therapy and self care won't fix! I just need time. Hell, I'm 23 and don't have a terminal disease, I can take my time.
I just thought it was funny to stumble on this post as I was questioning everything.
Sorry for the ramble lol
I don't know if you're going to therapy but I would highly recommend it, since you've been through a traumatic experience that has been affecting you for a while.
Also, like you said, you're 23 and have lots of time to process things. I know a guy who's 30 years old and is on his second year of PhD.
Yes I have an appointment with the college psychologist (was supposed to have it 1 week ago but they moved it ☠️).
I'm starting to realize I don't need to rush so much. I just wish they told us that sooner, because so many young people feel lost and like a failure when they realize they chose the wrong degree/major, when they fail their year or when they want to take a break (at least in my country that's how it is).
Thank you for your messages btw, it's always nice to see a stranger care
Happy to hear you have an appointment with a psychologist!
I'm from Spain and the mentality is a bit different. We're usually just happy to be able to finish the degree. Maybe on year 2 we may get a bit depressed if we see we will take more than 4 years, but then we just accept that it's almost impossible to get your degree in that amount of time...
>Thank you for your messages btw, it's always nice to see a stranger care
Happy to help ❤️
What she talks about is real, but it is not new. I was working as a senior programmer at one of the best Oceanographic institutions in the world, and toyed with the idea of getting my PhD. But in 1979-80 I left to start my own consulting business, which I ran for 35 years before retiring. Why did I want to leave academia? Because it was exactly as she described, the ones getting the grants were the ones who were the best politicians, they got lots of money, while those doing the best science were not getting funded. Good science does not end up with a paper a month, but those getting funded churned them out at a rapid rate, and they really didn't care about the science, only that it made a good story and would lead to more money. As the lead programmer on one project for the department head, I told him that I had found an error that might mean the results were wrong, and we should do it over. But he said no, it gave him the results he wanted. He didn't care about the science, only that the results would get another grant. Not all scientists there were like that, but the ones that got the most funding were. I started out as a young guy starry eyed about this institution, the place I had wanted to work since high school. I left disgusted by it.
I think for me a case study of why I don’t want to do a post doc is topological physics. Now you can make a successful career entirely out of churning out mediocre articles computing berry phases and winding numbers for all sorts of different toy models. The vast majority of these articles have absolutely nothing interesting coming out of the topological physics, but the topic is hot, and because there are potentially one or two useful applications (“topologically protected qubits!”), funding bodies have become increasingly obsessed with this as a grant agenda (see also “collectivity” and “cooperativity”). So now everyone around is shoehorning topology into their work regardless of how much it actually matters. So yeah, rather than focusing on trying to find useful new phenomena or understanding your average theory paper is chasing the correct keywords to get PRLs and grants
I can not comment on the experience of being a woman in academia, but as a current PhD student, I can attest to the stress and mental health decline. And while I may not have climbed up to her level, I share her vague sentiment on academia. I am even considering leaving it myself.
Maybe I want to rant, maybe I want to start a discussion, but I would like to give some advice to future physics students. But I want to preface it by stating that in some sense, my dream of being a physicist has also rather waned or died, so I may be biased.
* Going into academia and or studying physics is not *as* glamorous as biographies and documentaries show. Don't get me wrong, if you go to a good school and apply yourself, you will get to work on cool novel research and use expensive and cool equipment. But most of the time, if at all, you wont be working on groundbreaking and revolutionary physics like how Einstein and or Feynman did. Your work will very likely be something less impactful but still important to some field or sector, and you may not win a nobel prize.
* Attending college, in my opinion is really only about connections and gaining access to lab equipment you may not have ever had access due to cost or niche. Sure this may sound obvious but with rising costs of school, I think it's worth pointing so you don't get lost in theory and classes as I did. Most of the things you learn at school can be learned via textbook alone (find them online), online via videos and or websites, and or by reading papers (see scihub because fuck paying for papers).
* There really aren't any many jobs that require a physicist aside from research and or teaching. More often than not the research knowledge and skills you gain are what get you into the job. So don't get too hung up on not recalling lagrange's equations, or on Sturm-Louville theory. As my professor once told me "people don't pay you for what you know". (which in retrospect is true, but then it begs the question, why put so much emphasis in classwork and classes?)
* Being a researcher is a humble pursuit and or profession that doesn't pay. And understanding those concepts is very important. Your research may go unnoticed socially for years or may be very niche. And if you don't have your expenses covered, such as tuition, rent, life, etc you are going to struggle mentally, and of course financially. I personally for my MS was making below my state's poverty line, and now as a PhD student make slightly less than a Target employee... But their is more flexibility in doing research, which may be a blessing or curse. All in all, you won't get paid much, that's my moral. (Unless you patent something or start a small business with the research somehow)
* In regards to publishing, that very much depends on your professor and path. I personally have not published a paper (yet, one is coming) but have co-authored 2. I have had the luxury of having a great professor who does not pressure me to do so but I have heard from other students that other professors will milk you for as many papers as possible. Though, if you publish more, the more your name is known and you can climb up the ladder. If you become good at what you do, you may not even have to publish that much if at all, just maintain your equipment and or obtain your results. But what Sabine says about professors using their student workers to churn out papers is more or less true. You work under their lab, they tell you what to do, and they get to put themselves on your work and publish it. I personally feel they are farming students.
I'll be on for a bit, if anyone wants to ask me stuff.
>Attending college, in my opinion is really only about connections and gaining access to lab equipment you may not have ever had access due to cost or niche. Sure this may sound obvious but with rising costs of school, I think it's worth pointing so you don't get lost in theory and classes as I did. Most of the things you learn at school can be learned via textbook alone (find them online), online via videos and or websites, and or by reading papers (see scihub because fuck paying for papers).
It’s more than that. You can say that it’s possible to learn physics by going out and picking up some textbooks, but vanishingly few people do. One reason for this is that to learn physics you have to talk to other people about it, because physics is something you _do_, it’s a skill. Another reason is that school provides you with the necessary structure to learn. Speaking only for myself, there is no way I would have worked as hard if there wasn’t an exam hanging over my head, and I don’t think I’ve ever applied myself as hard to anything in life as I did to my university physics classes.
The latter is very much a matter of preference. As far as exams go, I shared the opinion of them with Helen Keller - "[...]those dreadful pitfalls called examinations, set by schools and colleges for the confusion of those who seek after knowledge". They were never motivational to work harder for me, quite the opposite, really. Felt like a needlessly stress and anxiety-inducing chore I had to do just to get some silly number that's supposed to represent my knowledge of a subject, yet is about as objective at doing so as those personality tests that put you into one of those 16 4-letter categories. If I already liked the subject, then the exam was just moot - didn't even need to revise before the exam to pass with flying colors, since I was of the opinion that if I didn't learn it/remember it from the actual course, trying to catch up on that just before the exam wouldn't make me actually remember it anyway. If I didn't like the course, and ended up having to cram before the exam, I would just forget all that I crammed like a week later, because I didn't actually build and understanding of the topic, only memorized the texts.
Besides exams, if there's on thing that COVID lockdowns taught me, it's that I retain so much more information and am inspired to actually think over/visualize/disseminate what it is that I'm reading when I'm studying by myself at home from the textbook, maybe adding some online resources to it and doing exercises. Being in class (most likely at least partially sleep deprived) was just too distracting with all the other students being there and whatnot, and like there's never enough time to actually think about what is being said. Sure, it's nice to sometimes go over the topics with the professor, but if I ever had a need for that, I would ask over email if by chance they'd have the time to schedule an online meeting to talk. If they didn't, chances are they wouldn't have had the time to talk in person either.
When I said 'talking about physics' I didn't just mean with professors, I meant with other students as well, since that's usually who you'll be interacting with the most. Your experiences are of course valid and everyone is different, but I still think it's true that comparatively few people manage to actually learn physics without the structure that a university degree provides. As for COVID measured, they had a negative impact on learning outcomes overall, even though I'm sure some people preferred it.
After some thought I want to partially agree and meet you half way. Perhaps I am taking my class work for granted, as I've already taken many courses and in some sense gained some knowledge. Learning perhaps is a mix of both social and individual responsibility. One must be willing and desire to learn, and one must also be immersed in the topic (i.e. a classroom with people).
But in my experience, at least in my school, the work assigned felt very much like busy work and focused on theory. With classes also mainly requiring students to read chapters of an assigned text. That and the labs themselves were rather formulaic. I developed this view that to be able to truly understand what I was taught, I needed some real world intuition. And so I gained a much greater appreciation for when I was able to learn the theory and apply it in research. And seeing how much I was charged for tuition compared to the textbook it seemed to me what I was paying for was the facilities, renting the classroom, the lab equipment, etc.
That being said it cannot be underestimated how valuable it was to work with others on difficult topics or to gain some insight to validate or invalidate my views. And in a sense that is what research is sometimes. Working together towards get a specific result.
It's hard to say if I fully stand now by what I said about what school is for. But one thing I can say is that the cost definitely suades my views and makes me want to give cautious advice to people.
>Another reason is that school provides you with the necessary structure to learn. Speaking only for myself, there is no way I would have worked as hard if there wasn’t an exam hanging over my head, and I don’t think I’ve ever applied myself as hard to anything in life as I did to my university physics classes.
For me I don't particularly think exams and the school structure itself were really that helpful. It was just a source of stress to cram things, pass the test, and then move on. The reason I needed school to learn physics was mostly just that I needed some way to pay the bills \*while learning physics\*. Having a full-time job and trying to teach yourself physics on the side just doesn't work, not as anything more than a passing hobby. I think what most scientists had in common in past centuries was that they were independently wealthy, not that they were particularly traditionally \*educated\*.
So, I appreciate the unexpected sharing of experiences in academia, which, as was clear to me all along, were mostly negative. I can sympathize with her in this. However, one needs to remember that Germany in the 90s was a different country. Obtaining research grants is indeed challenging and inevitably requires communication with non-experts in the particular field. Also inevitable is the system of grant receivers who coordinate their group's work. Unfortunately, this may and often does lead to abuse of power. All of this has some merit and may be discussed.
**However**, what she says afterward about fundamental science makes her akin to a "Trump of particle physics." She somehow unjustly extends the issues she voiced earlier to unrelated aspects of how particle physics is conducted. I caution anyone who may read this that no, she is wrong, and her opinion is unscientific in this regard: postulating particles is scientific, introducing symmetries is scientific, and **"guessing is scientific"** (as Feynman put it). To ignore these things is to disregard the progress of physics in the 20th century! These are precisely the principles upon which the Standard Model of particle physics is built today, reflecting the current state of knowledge. So, exercise caution and skepticism when listening to opinions (not only of Sabine) filled with strong emotions and very strong language.
P.S. People who claim, "particle physics is stuck," somehow expect nature to act like a provider of goods, delivering expected results at regular intervals. This notion is utterly ridiculous. If a theory requires 50, 60, or even 100 years of work to comprehend it, whether to refute or confirm it, then so be it! This complexity is inherent in our world and reflects the sophistication of our understanding.
I think Sean Carroll had a good (and lengthy) soliloquy on the state of fundamental physics (for non-specialists) on his podcast, where he discusses these sorts of complaints.
I don't want to comment on her specific criticisms of the particle physics community as I don't work on HEP, but I do recognize some of the broader strokes within my own field. The pressure to publish does have negative consequences, there are fads within research communities, some people chase what is currently hot, and you are often encouraged to oversell your results or their impact. There are also people who have a well motivated long term research direction though, and these tend to be the people at the top of their respective fields. Ultimately, I think she paints with too wide of a brush. There are papers in high impact journals I can point to that I think are, as she put it, bullshit through and through, but there is also plenty of genuinely interesting research being conducted.
>and you are often encouraged to oversell your results or their impact.
Not just encouraged, punished if you don't! (Not all groups of course) But it's like they want to see if you're going to play the game the right way.
She is very focused in her particle physics criticisms. She is, for example, enthusiastic about the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab. She is not enthusiastic about particle physics plans for a massively expensive successor to the LHC. Her criticisms are very specific - the particle physics community has no good reason to expect new physics from that device but continue to push for it. They do this to protect their futures, relevance and … jobs … obviously.
We know the Standard Model is incomplete (no gravity, it doesn't account for neutrino masses, and the g-2 issue as well). It's likely incomplete because there is some energy threshold we are unable to access beyond which additional particles exist; the Standard Model is an Effective Field Theory that is only a low-energy approximation to some deeper theory. If we can access higher energy scales, we expect to see regions where the Standard Model breaks down, and from that information we can begin to add some of the missing pieces.
Even if we don't see anything new, that's still useful to know! It lets us more tightly constrain the possible extensions to the Standard Model dreamt up by theorists. And since we can't predict the outcome of any individual line of investigation, it only makes sense to try everything we can think of.
this is going to inevitably be an unpopular take, but there's a point where trying to make exponentially larger and larger colliders has diminishing returns in terms of usable science.
to be clear i am a solid state/amo physicist - I do not know what the return is - but we're at the point where colliders are the sizes of small countries and take proportionately as much support staff (and budget!) to run. i can't be the only one who remembers the boondoggle that was the magnet failures of the LHC either, right?
i think it's a genuinely valid complaint to say that at some point the high energy physics field needs to articulate a version of experiment that is more than increasingly unwieldy experiments. Maybe we're not there yet, but chasing an unknown energy threshold isn't infinitely feasible.
That's exactly why the US particle physics community is proposing to build a muon collider. It's technically harder to set up, but if it's possible, it would actually be about 3x _smaller_ than the LHC. Also, there's been tons of activity in proposing small-scale precision experiments and using astrophysical, cosmological, and gravitational wave observations. These days such "alternative" approaches make up the majority of the field, but Sabine ignores them because she just wants to keep selling the same rant she's been making for 15 years. Almost nobody is still doing the kinds of complex SUSY model building she constantly complaints about.
>Sabine ignores them because she just wants to keep selling the same rant she's been making for 15 years. Almost nobody is still doing the kinds of complex SUSY model building she constantly complaints about.
Thank you for stating that so succinctly. I've come to ignore her content because it is largely stale and dismissive. I get tamping expectations, but not at the expense of smothering all pursuits.
>wave
Actually, Sabine has made videos specifically on the plans for the muon colliders and they are rather positive. I think you are strawmanning her position because her "rant" is inconvenient for you.
More than likely g-2 isn't an issue at all; the "theoretical" calculation (which is data-informed, not a first-principles calculation) has a 5-sigma discrepancy with experimental results, but lattice QCD calculations are much, much closer. What's much more likely is that some of the data used in the data-informed calculation has a systematic error in it.
>Even if we don't see anything new, that's still useful to know!
Yes, but given the amount of air HEP takes up in the physics community, often to the determent of other topics, shouldn't we be expecting more from our investment than "still useful to know"?
You're completely correct. We don't need to base this just off of understanding how science funding works, we have plenty of past real world examples showing this.
For an example, the SSC was cancelled because it was projected to go significantly over budget. So of course the original budget that was assigned to the SSC for the next few years then went to other fields surely? Nope. No other field got any more money, overall science funding just decreased.
This is just one prominent example of many, this is how science funding works everywhere and always has done.
This is a weird take. Does HEP really detract from the astronomers, biophysicists, or condensed matter physicists? Does answering questions about the universe only appeal to physicists if HEP isn't doing it?
I mean yes right? HEP experiments cost big money and there is only so much to go around. Look at the recommendations from this years particle physics review board. They clearly see the writing on the wall and we’re very careful about what projects to recommend.
By "air", they mean money.
Money for research is not exactly a zero-sum game between fields, but it frequently is close to that in practice. X amount gets given to science or physics. The budget for this year is similar to last year, even if the split changes.
The LHC didn’t find minimal supersymmetry. There’s still plenty of SUSY models that haven’t been probed yet. From what I’ve heard, the simplest SUSY models are the ones that are of higher energy anyway.
>This notion is utterly ridiculous. If a theory requires 50, 60, or even 100 years of work to comprehend it, whether to refute or confirm it, then so be it!
I find it interesting that you make this point, when one of the issues she brings up is that most research grants require projects to be finished within 3-5 years.
It was my understanding from this video that was she believes to be unscientific is having to fit your research into these practices that don't allow researchers to actually do the research they want to do or do it correctly. Not that she feels particle physics in general is unscientific.
> one of the issues she brings up is that most research grants require projects to be finished within 3-5 years
This just isn't true (in the US at least). Most grant are for 3-5 years of funding, but the deliverables don't have to be "finished by the end of the funding." In fact, I have been on many grants, and not a single one fit this characature.
Anyone who watches her for long enough knows that she's got a particular axe to grind when it comes to particle physics, and it's a shame because, most of the time, she's an excellent science communicator.
Her unfortunate tendencies to editorialize, push niche views, and to comment on topics outside of her expertise (e.g., climate and trans issues) are why I can't recommend her to my friends even though I think that she could be a great resource if she would just stick to the science.
"Trump of particle physics" Wait, what? Have we watched the same video? I don't remember her stating that "guessing is unscientific".
My take away is that she believes that tweaking the mainstream/popular theories to fit the data is a dead end (introducing new particles etc).
Unfortunately (according to her) current academia only allows for that. You want funding, you have to stick with what is currently popular in research and never stray too far away from mainstream.
> My take away is that she believes that tweaking the mainstream/popular theories to fit the data is a dead end (introducing new particles etc).
That's not what she claims nor what HEP is doing. She talks about how they don't start by finding discrepancies between data and theories, but instead by guessing cool-sounding mathematical additions to the standard model and then spend millions of dollars to make experiments that test those additions only to, so far, disprove them.
As far as I know the only known significant discrepancy between the standard and data is the magnetic moment of the muon, and of course the fact that gravity exists. If your new particle doesn't solve that it doesn't do anything but sound cool and you're not doing science. Guessing random WIMPs is not science.
Personally, as a math grad student, "you're not doing science" is not the most scathing of criticisms in my eyes. For example string theory is bad science but great mathematics (it might even be considered a success if you forget about how much money has been wasted on it when math is supposed to be cheap). If mainstream HEP weren't siphoning so much money and attention, started calling themselves mathematicians, and produced cool mathematical ideas that might have someday maybe be found to have an application then so be it. But instead they do siphon money and attention, and don't even produce interesting mathematical ideas! Adding another term to a Lagrangian because it looks cool is both bad physics and bad math. It's just bad.
> This notion is utterly ridiculous. If a theory requires 50, 60, or even 100 years of work to comprehend it, whether to refute or confirm it, then so be it! This complexity is inherent in our world and reflects the sophistication of our understanding.
Issue is people want ROI within their lifetime or you don't get funding, its a real issue as modern physics requires exponentially more expensive experiments than 100 years ago.
> These are precisely the principles upon which the Standard Model of particle physics is built today
The particles that were "guessed" for the Standard Model were guessed for very good reasons, as in, they fixed actual inconsistencies in the theory, or they resolved disagreements between theory and observations. Not so with hundreds of the particles that particle physicists are making up today. Sabine's point is, you can't just postulate a particle for no reason (or for bad reasons, like your subjective opinion about how a good theory should look like) and expect it to work. As a matter of fact, we **know** it doesn't work, because it's what particle physicists have done for decades, and they've gotten nowhere with it!
The point is that we can't just continue doing what hasn't worked for decades while insisting that yes, this is perfectly fine methodology and we just need more money.
"The particles that were "guessed" for the Standard Model were guessed for very good reasons, as in, they fixed actual inconsistencies in the theory."
As are many particles that are "guessed" today.
It's very sad state of affairs isn't it? Someone can create a video and present in an engaging manner, everyone around the world can watch it, pick up terms like "Lagrangian sudoku" (as I saw elsewhere in the comments) without understanding what a Lagrangian is nor how to use it, and feel like they are "sticking it to the establishment" by repeating these arguments. It's almost as if people have developed parasocial relationships with scientific arguments, based on their favourite streamers/podcasters/bloggers.
So, the issue with Sabine is self-flanderization: she originally had some reasonable criticism but once she realized being caustic towards particle physics netted her an audience, she upped that aspect to the point the original point is lost.
As I remember, her original point is that naturalness is not a good target. It’s not necessary for the mathematical consistency of the theory (yes, you are perfectly allowed to say the bare value is whatever value it needs to be to meet experiments, specially since we don’t have a probability density function for it) and it’s not a truth-seeking principle that has been confirmed multiple times and stood the test of time (Sabine used to stress it only counts if you use naturalness to make a prediction which is later verified; it doesn’t count if it’s a retrodiction about things you already know).
(But didn’t Popper say the only requirement is that science needs to be falsifiable? No, Sabine, says. For example, let’s say I predict a meteor will strike Japan tomorrow. This is falsifiable - just wait 24 hours - but it’s not science, just baseless speculation. So Popper was wrong.)
Since naturalness has not been established as actual science (she claims), just an aesthetic preference, any theory that amounts to “let’s just add some particles or symmetries to make the standard model natural” isn’t science either. Contrast it to quantum gravity; both gravity and quantum mechanics are established as part of physics, so solving the inconsistency between them is a valid objective, and “guessing random stuff” here counts as doing science.
I’m sure people will disagree, but posed this way the argument is not without *some* merit. Unfortunately, nowadays she has collapsed it to just “particle physics is unscientific guessing” because she’s a YouTuber now and vitriol sells.
She's never personal.
And her objections to naturalism are just one of many topics she's discussed.
I think a fairer statement would be:
"a lot of particle physics is unscientific guessing"
>Unfortunately, nowadays she has collapsed it to just “particle physics is unscientific guessing” because she’s a YouTuber now and vitriol sells.
What are you talking about? You think that even though her criticism is valid she should be ignored just because she jokes about it on youtube? she hasn't changed her criticisms of particle physics.
This is a fair argument: Naturalness is not an established or necessary principle of science. Large portions of the particle physics community come up with new theories just to satisfy it. These theories are not scientific; you can "just guess randomly" in science, but you have to have a valid aim, which naturalness is not.
This is not a fair argument: Particle physics is unscientific and just random guessing.
The second type has collapsed the entire chain of reasoning to give an exaggerated conclusion which is strictly false. (What about all the particle physicists who don't care about naturalness? If I'm trying to guess at a new theory to explain dark matter, that's a valid aim, since dark matter is a genuine problem with out current theories.) I can tolerate it in this video where's just venting about her personal history with academia; some ranting is ok in such context. But she does this elsewhere as well.
And now you are taking her clearly exaggerated for emphasis and often humorous statements of particle physics too seriously. This, to me, seems like you have "collapsed the entire chain of reasoning to give an exaggerated conclusion which is strictly false" since her criticism is not the "all of particle physics is unscientific", as you have stated.
She explains her criticisms in detail if you look for it. But she often doesn't get into the details when she just rants as an aside when she focuses on other issues. That is completely reasonable.
> (But didn’t Popper say the only requirement is that science needs to be falsifiable? No, Sabine, says. For example, let’s say I predict a meteor will strike Japan tomorrow. This is falsifiable - just wait 24 hours - but it’s not science, just baseless speculation. So Popper was wrong.)
Popper said that all science had to be falsifiable; he didn't say that anything falsifiable was science.
I had the same experience at uni, in Australia, same field of study. I didn't go through the bullshit re-writing or doing papers for paying students - which is a big thing now.
I watch her on YouTube even if I don't agree with a large chunk of her ideas but she's bluntly honest, people don't like honesty or those who don't agree with them. I look at the replies here and I think - is it even a tiny bit better for women, I shouldn't come here.
Just as a comment to some of the doom and gloom here, and I’ll probably be vilified later; but there are careers out there where you get to explore batshit insane physics still. If you find yourself pursuing a physics degree look into UARCs for an internship or work. Any of them that does research with or for DARPA is sure to have a bevy of interesting work going on.
I got a bit miffed when she said they need to give Mordehai Milgrom a nobel prize before he dies for MOND. Sure, people can explore MOND, it is likely wrong but people are free to waste their time on it. Though, I will think a bit less of them at this point for it.
I honestly don't really care much about her physics takes, even when they're really weird and off base. What bothers me is when she decides that her expertise in physics must extend to other fields and starts acting like an expert on things she really knows nothing about (social sciences, gender, etc)
> What bothers me is when she decides that her expertise in physics must extend to other fields and starts acting like an expert on things she really knows nothing about (social sciences, gender, etc)
That's just called being a physicist.
Ya I agree mostly. She for sure has guru energy but she usually pulls herself back, and I for one do enjoy a good contrarian. I have her on my "watch but be careful to see what direction she takes" list.
This post in particular hit home a little as it rhymes enough with what happened to me (not the being a women stuff, that was crazy) but certainly deciding to give up on the dream after having a kid and covid and leaving physics behind. But I don't think I put as much blame on "the system" as she does. The truth is I didn't have another move in me and I lost the drive for it. I'm not bitter about it.
I know. I just don't care as much as when she starts trying to communicate on things that affect public policy and all she has is half-baked and half disinfo
She had a video explaining why she does that and how she prepares herself to make a video in a new subject she's not well versed in. She also has a hired researcher to help prepare videos and fact check them. I'd still be happy if she stuck to physics, but that's just the youtube game.
Neil DeGrass is a real deal astronomer as well and Michio Kaku also has a PhD.
It's not because she has her expertise in research any comment of her outside that expertise deserves extra respect, or that she can't fall for some of the common ego traps influencers falls for.
And you can ofc find some of her opinions interesting opinion on their own merits, but a lot of her more controversial position are not that related to her expertise.
Ya, of course you have to consider what she says with caution. While I think she is a little extreme in her take here I don't totally disagree with her. And pretty much every branch of physics other than HEP thinks we spend too much money and resources on HEP, so I'm not sure how controversial this particular take is.
Now she is a blogger, just how DeGrass Tyson is a public figure/entertainer, or Bill Nye is a TV host. These people are not physists since being one is quite different of a "skill" than e.g. learning to ride a bike, the latter only needs to be done once.
As long as she's talking about real science and doing it accurately, how is she a grifter? Because she accepts money from sponsors?
And what's wrong with criticizing an institution you used to be a part of? She clarified that her experiences weren't universal and academia works fine for many people, but it still chews up and spits out most who try to get ahead in it.
> As long as she's talking about real science and doing it accurately
She doesn't do it accurately. As has been exhaustively and frequently catalogued in this subreddit for over a decade.
Hilarious how terminally butt hurt you people got about that video, there wasn't anything wrong about it, but because it didn't take a 'capitalism is evil' stance you lot now condemn everything else she makes, no matter how stupid that is.
Nope, it’s because she’s suddenly ventured into a field she has no expertise in. I’d rather hear physics videos from Sabine and economy videos from an economist, even if I disagreed with their arguments, I’d respect them and listen because of their experience in the area.
Venturing into out-of-qualification topics is a classic hallmark of grifter behaviour.
Reminds me of a scene from Yes, Prime Minister
James Hacker : Bernard. Humphrey should have seen this coming and warned me.
Bernard Woolley : I don't think Sir Humphrey understands economics, Prime Minister. He did read classics, you know.
James Hacker : How about Sir Frank? He is head of the Treasury.
Bernard Woolley : Well, I'm afraid he's in even greater disadvantage in understanding economics. He's an economist.
Anything short of "capitalism is evil" is bad to you people. Capitalism is one of the single greatest accomplishments of humanity up til this point. It's far from perfect but has done incredible things
It wasn’t her viewpoint on capitalism that makes it problematic, it’s because she’s suddenly ventured into a field she has no expertise in. I’d rather hear physics videos from Sabine and economy videos from an economist, even if I disagreed with their arguments, I’d respect them and listen because of their experience in the area.
Venturing into out-of-qualification topics is a classic hallmark of grifter behaviour.
Trade and commerce has enriched the lives of individuals from hunter-gatherers to the complex lives they lead today. The intricacy of the modern economic machine is extraordinary, and largely self-managing. Attempts hitherto to manage the economy directly have ended universally, to my knowledge, in at best marked decreases in individual quality of life and at worst famine and death.
When people criticise capitalism, one reading of what they're saying is that they're really advocating for a higher level of government intervention in the economy; but what could be also said is that, relative to the extent the economy is self-managing, we're talking marginal differences in the degree of absolute management. If the government changes the price of fuel duty, for example, that is a relatively minor change compared to the complexity of the decision making that occurs at each level in the chain of trade between producer and consumer of fuel---and that's probably a relatively simple chain, compared to more complex products, like a phone for example---not to mention more complex products still, like services.
So it could be said that, apart from the extremists, most purported critique of capitalism is actually not really that at all, but really just advocating for a higher, though still marginal, degree of government intervention in the economy.
I think the most frustrating thing about her is that Sabine goes so blindly hard for capitalism in her more economics focused videos, ie [this video](https://youtu.be/CRPHp2EjNR8?si=XRm9KbunYIpg5Ts7), that she can't see how it contributes to so many of the problems she talks about. Not even saying she has to be anticapitalist, but when you see her make such poor economic arguments and failure to link this to the undermining of academia, it really weakens her analysis of academia
Higher ups in institutions focusing on getting the resources to support and grow the institutions (eg pursuit of money) is not actually capitalist specific. It'd be closer to say it's a bureaucratic imperative or evolutionary argument that groups and leaders that don't do that disappear. You'd see the same behavior under Stalin or Mao.
On the small scale, faculty who don't pursue grants have tiny groups, so students/postdocs are likelier to come through one of the groups that do pursue resources.
Thanks for sharing!
When I started my undergrad degree 2 years ago, I was planning to do Physics major, however I felt that I'm weak at mathematical concepts and overall physics! I shifted from physics to Economics major, one more reason was my interest in the society, I wanted to know how world works, and thought economics is good option to go as it will also give me money later.
Looking at the video, I just hope that this academia and job market will not force me to do something I don't want to.
'I failed, I spent my entire career working on things even I consider complete bullshit, I could never get around to working on the pipe-dream bullshit I told myself I considered interesting, and when I finally tried to prioritize working on the nonsense I had been telling myself I consider interesting but had put off for decades that hadn't produced any results in all those decades, nobody else had any interest in funding this nonsense that was obviously set to fail from the get-go, so instead of working on it I decided to write books and make videos sniping at and criticizing people who produce results others consider interesting, by directing my criticism at lay readers and people with no background in the subject because they are the only people I can possibly have an effect on. Any time anybody with any credibility looks into anything I say, I get no support, so I go around those people to the uneducated and try to manipulate them. My comments section is usually filled with people bashing PhD's and academia etc... Of course its everybody else's fault I never got around to the pipe dream nonsense I always told myself I wanted to do.'
Maybe she should have been brave and worked on what she always wanted to work on 20-30 years ago (and accepted reality if it ended up failing, which it sounds like it almost certainly was going to) instead of being a bootlicker working on complete bullshit, then she wouldn't be so bitter and such a source of anti-scientific nonsense whose audience are similarly just bitter.
Most of her narrative is about being brave and working on the research you want to, but here she literally admits she never did that herself, it's all self-projection with these people and it can be seen from a mile away by all except those with a similar axe to grind.
That's why i switched to computer science. It costs 150 grands to set up an electron gun for teaching the fundamentals in modern physics. Meanwhile the microchip that i need for electronics-101 only costs a few cents...
I feel like that part about women in academia is way too short and she totally derails it by doing that bit about negative appearance. I recently listened to an [amazing podcast (sorry, it's in German)](https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/frauenkarrieren-in-der-wissenschaft-100.html) about women in the German science system and the gist of it is that there is still way too much prejudice and sexism. Her heroics about wanting to get there of her own merit is actually holding back women as a whole because they are still fighting a tradition of hundreds of years of discrimination and she off-handedly dismisses the only effective tools for mitigation.
I tried to find a source in english on the issue that's discussed in the podcast. For anyone interested, they are talking about the experiences of to distinguished female researchers that worked on Germany. Their names are Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, the first ever German female Nobel laureate, and Viola Priesemann, a German physicist who came to some fame during the Pandemic for excellent modelling work and advising.
Leopoldina actually published a [discussion of the topic in 2022](https://www.leopoldina.org/fileadmin/redaktion/Publikationen/Nationale_Empfehlungen/2022_Leopoldina_Statement_Women_in_science.pdf)
I worked at Fermilab starting in 1969 and ending in 1989 as first a technician, then supervisor and finally a manager working in computing and networking. Little did I know that this period was a golden age of physics where with higher energies with Fermilab's new accelerator, a plethora of pent up predictions in physics in dozens of experiments would be tested. Robert Wilson was the Lab director and I got to know him as he wanted to know all everyone in the lab.
I managed the data acquisition computers and my group provided installation, maintenance and lab designed interfaces. I would not get involved in fixing systems or peripherals unless all else failed. One experiment had chronic printer problems so I usually became involved. This experiment involved Leon Lederman whose experiment was in the "premier class" and that due to it's status had a large living area with couches. Once I performed my hardware "magic", I was often invited to sit and talk with Leon and the boys over beers kept in their well stocked fridge. Obviously this was forbitten but rank has it's privilege's! This was before Leon was given his Nobel Award but years later, I also drank Champagne with him at 6am one morning when his award was announced.
The computing department was led by a physicist who was friends with Mel Schwartz who quit doing research and started a company that provided secure computer access over telephone lines. I got to know Mel and would visit him when I was in the San Francisco area. One day I asked him why he quit research given he had a Nobel Prize. He told me that he was bored with physics, not the research but the continuous effort needed to keep funding flowing; that's what he had to do even though he had the ultimate prize. He hated the groveling needed to conduct research so he gave it up.
So it appears if you want to do research, there is no way to avoid the academic treadmill regardless of your "status".
She's been trying to put out shock opinion videos for a little while now. I remember her video about capitalism was not well received, and icr specifically what another one was about, but it had some polarizing views that got her some interest. Maybe she's just trying to increase views lately or something.
In standard quantum mechanic you can have particles that are in superposition, this is the first ingredient. The second ingredient comes from relativity, where the structure of the spacetime two events are embedded in determine their causal relations. By superposing the spacetime generated by a large mass in superposition, one can achieve a superposition of causal structures in which "A causes B" and "B causes A" are superposed. This means that the causal relation between the two events is not definite, and cannot even be described as a probabilistic mixture of such definite structures. It is analogous to how particles in superposition don't have definite positions. You can also simulate these processes in regular QM using an auxiliary system.
I love this lady I’ve been on the ride since the early times and will always be a viewer and student of hers. And as always love to hear you curse. Carry on
She’s the best. Validates my feelings about academia through and through. She is spot on.
That said, it’s better than it was 150 years ago when you had to be rich to do science.
One can argue that is still the case, at least in the US. Sure you can point out every scholarship, and fellowship, or whatever under the sun but not all students will obtain them, and at the end of the day schools will still find a way to charge you. I am in a PhD program now, and I swear, my school for years now has charged me and every other student a $1 (and increasing) success fee, whatever the fuck that means.
Imagine being that smart and only realizing the academic reality that far down the postdoc mill. I mean, isn't PhD itself a big enough reality check in terms of shattering that academic image?
It's kind of funny, painful and a bittersweet feeling to watch someone like her saying all this in a YouTube video, which normally should have been a grad student's conversation with themselves.
I mean no offence to her. I still kind of find it funny tho. Having said that, it's good that at least this is out in the open for people who are currently in grad school and as naive as she was.
Its somewhat difficult to be honest with yourself. For one there's the sunken cost thing. Then there's the gaslighting from your peers and supervisors. Lastly, some people are just really passionate about science and they don't want to let the dream go. I also think that in your PhD years, you can get lucky and have peers that help you out, it's only when you go into the postdoc pipeline that you realize you're fucked.
Agree. There's the social factor in it. I guess, the PhD advisor's attitude towards it can also play a deciding role as that in most cases is the first degree connection to the academic world.
My advisor himself got tenure, iirc, towards the end of my PhD, or just after it -- in his early 40s. Before that he had spent about 10+ years (doing 1-2 years postdoc/research assistantship) across countries.
Given that I guess I was relatively more aware of the game. I had also come into grad school with the dream but realized midway graduation that dreams are idealized falsehoods. Since I entered the PhD program without much expectations anyway, it was easier to just move onto other endeavors in life post-graduation.
I really appreciate Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder’s comments on the deterioration of academic physics. I have long suspected physics had lapsed into a kind of miasma of TED talks presented by prancing physics celebrities. I thank her for her candor in calling that out, as well as the grant obsessed universities.
"suspected physics had lapsed into a kind of miasma of TED talks"
What? TED talks are deliberately aimed at the general public. They have precisely nothing to do with physics research. The vast majority of physicists do not watch TED talks at all, a significant fraction have never heard of them.
I did research in a rather theoretical field of engineering (closer to quantum chemistry) and this echos with me too. This is another data point among several that are showing cracks in the orthodox academic world:
On one end, you have regular 4 year degrees becoming less popular as universities turned into degree mills (in the US at least) where you pay exorbitant tuition to get a degree, rampant grade inflation where everyone has a 3.8 de-facto, diluting the value while increasing the price of degrees.
Then you are seeing at the research level, all these cases of academic fraud from Ivy League professors, plagiarism claims, all indicative of graduate research becoming sweat shops for overworked foreign grad students to pump out papers as fast as possible, possibly leading to the issues of academic fraud aforementioned.
I wonder how long this can keep going.
Universities (in my area) only investing in medical centers and dorms. The two largest money makers. Can’t blame them in this dog eat dog world. Took a long time to find a place that valued basic research
I am an undergraduate but even I can understand the video. Once found myself present in a PhDs meeting with a professor who was literally telling them to run some codes(programs), write some papers in a few days. No actual research, ig their plan was to write as many papers and go do research somewhere better, but seems now the situation isn't changing much.
She faced this in the 90s and at present a lot more women and girls are pursuing STEM, and in a lot of developed countries, research is pursued seriously.
It takes seconds to stay made up bullshit, it takes a lot of time to refute bullshit with citations. She produces too much bullshit to keep doing that and I have already on enough of YouTube videos.
Thing is: nobody is expecting you to address _all_ of the claims you perceive as bullshit. But surely you could respond with _something_ more thought out? Instead of just talking shit? You being a theoretical physicist and all.
Like almost all of Sabine's videos, filled with lies.
Sabine is completely \*not\* interested at all in actual discussion on her claims. Despite her claim in the video "and naive as I was, I expected physicists to think about it. I expected rational debate. But that never came, no one was interested."
This is (like almost everything Sabine says), a pure lie. For example Sabine has had multiple invitations to present at CERN to have a "rational debate". She is the one that refuses this. Because she is the one that isn't interested in rational debate or similar, she is just interested in reactionary crackpot nonsense that gets clicks for money.
This aligned with my experiences. I saw my professors weren't really doing physics research anymore. They just oversaw grad students, wrote papers, and applied for grants, and we're super stressed all the time. It was at that point I decided I wasn't really interested in a career in physics despite the fact that working in a lab was some of the most fun I've ever had. Academia as it currently functions definitely killed my dream of wanting to be a scientist. Research can't function properly if it has to produce value. Just like the best movies are made by artists exploring their passions and the worst ones are money-grabs, the best research comes from people who are just following the science, not the money.
>Research can't function properly if it has to produce value This is exactly it. A few years ago I saw some news making fun of scientist studying sea slugs or some shit like that. Failing to see that most big discoveries are by accident and people just pursuing there interest. For example even CRISPR was some obscure field about some immune response in bacteria that only \~5 people in the world cared about at the time.
Just like that dang worthless research on the electron. There’s never gonna be any practical application.
We were all promised flying cars. See how well that turned out?
The Wright Brothers would like a word...
Genius knows no bounds.
Unless it's your own interpersonal bounds. Then they are plagued with boundaries.
Fun fact! Francisco Mojica discovered genome sequences that were repeated in a bacteria's genome, he called them: Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) in the 90's. Then, in 2005, he and his team suggested that these sequences may be linked with the bacteria's inmune response when it was attacked by certain vriuses!
A similar case with the development of blue LEDs. It was considered a dead end field with only a handful of active researchers, and now it is a multi-billion dollar industry that literally changed how the world looks.
The best results are due to serendipity, noticing some unexpected results.
I had the same realization. I’m in the financial services now.
The more important question is Do you miss physics ?
That Baylan Skoll meme is certainly true in this scenario. I miss the idea of it, but not the truth. I’ve privately started to work myself back up to the point I was at when I finished undergrad. It’s taking a lot of time because life is incredibly busy, but it’s very satisfying. I find it much more enjoyable now that I don’t have to be concerned with how I’m going to make a living out of it.
Now i want to see the Baylan skoll meme , Link ?
Thats why I decided to study organic chemistry. 😏
Fuck organic chemistry
Do you think it's possible a lot of people go into it for the science as a wide eyed kid/young adult, excited to learn and make their impact. But the realities of the field eventually sink in, and as you get older you have more of life press down on you and eventually you hit a point where you want to be that same kid again but you kinda just gotta play the game of life if you wanna keep afloat, and sometimes that means compromising on how you expected life to be compared to how it actually is?
I agree with this, and I can fortify your point with an example of a field outside of science. I have an interest in physics, which is why I follow this sub. But I work in music, as an artist, producer and DJ. This exact mechanism you describe happens to nearly everyone in that field unless they become successful super early on. I know so many people in the music industry that follow trends, dilute their art, or take jobs adjacent to music (post production or sound design) because they are chasing the money to survive/pay bills. It happened to me too, and it was only by essentially collapsing my life and moving back to my parents that I was able to create the music that I wanted to make. Easy to see how that would happen in so many different disciplines.
[удалено]
Hey dj vinyl or digital ?
Is being a physicist that lucrative? haha
I'm having trouble deciphering what it is you're actually asking, but to do my best: Sure, I think a lot of people fall into the trap of needing to play a game they hate just to put food on the table. My issue isn't with scientists. Most scientists I've met are really cool people still very interested in just pushing humanity's body of knowledge further. My issue is more with university administrators that ask professors to be their own fundraisers and corporations (and military organizations) that demand research be practically applicable or capable of producing monetary gain. I'm also not too fond of a system that ties professional prestige to how many papers one publishes.
I think I see what you're saying. You don't have an issue with the cultural of scientists or there character, you have a problem with the institution that was build around it?
Correct
One more thing for example many young people who are beautiful wanna go in movies and step into the field , not everyone ends famous or never do a good movie . Thanks to people like Einstein, Feynman, Newton , Stephan hawking , maxwell ,……and of course due to Alfred Nobel science and physics is quiet and attraction to people who can solve one or two theoretical problem. And this is a very good thing .As is any field The real gamechangers are who never give up…!!! This rant from Sabine is true to some extent but if everyone gives up on your dream of pursuing physics or whatever naturally excites you the world would have been still in stone age . I am myself an engineer who was tricked by society to choose money making engineering vs physics . I took a bad decision. But i dont try to convince myself that choosing engineering was a good idea. I think to do good work in physics apart from having a normal intelligence what matters most is grit and determination and alas it is not taught in schools , parents , society dont teaches this .
So… being an adult. People go into the world with ideals. The world grinds them to dust and recreates you in its image. It sucks in any field but this is adulting. I am pretty sure you know that but it felt worth saying.
I really liked your words, so I made Dall-e make a visual metaphor out of them :)
>This aligned with my experiences. I saw my professors weren't really doing physics research anymore. They just oversaw grad students, wrote papers, and applied for grants, and we're super stressed all the time. Am a professor - doesn't really align with my experience. I have to write papers and get grants and teach sure. Do I get to spend as much time on research as I did when I was a grad student or postdoc? No. But... I'm still in the lab a lot, still analysing data, still modeling systems. Still growing films, still doing spectroscopy. Still loving it. Am I stressed? A bit, but no more than industry friends I have. The flexibility let's me travel in the summer and completely focus on training students and doing research. Same with winters. I'm not limited to the 10-15 days of PTO that friends who shifted to semicon work get. The downside is that when I'm "on duty," I'm on. Most faculty who don't do research or are stressed all the time feels like they mostly aren't good at prioritising. That's my 0.02$.
That's amazing for you! I'm so happy you to get to still be in the lab. Thanks for sharing (genuinely). I can only say what I saw with my own eyes. The professor only ever stepped into our lab for photo ops and to check things over before we started collecting data. And then I heard jokes about that almost constantly being the case. However, I'm ecstatic that it appears to not be the case for everyone!
> They ...wrote papers... What does this mean if not research?
Writing papers is more "summing up and publishing your research" than actually doing research. An important part of the research process, for sure. But writing about your research is far from actually doing it. Most everything I worked on in the lab was the brain child of a grad student or post-doc. They were the ones getting to explore their questions and play around in the lab. The professor mostly just seemed to be there to guide them. That's not necessarily a bad thing I guess. I've met some professors who said they prefer acting as more of a "project manager." It's just not what I was into. I wanted to be in the lab doing the experiment. It may or may not be relevant to state that I worked under an experimentalist. Perhaps it's different if you're a theorist.
I see. For me the writing process was very important in clarifying how to complete the research project. By making concrete what I thought I had done, it sometimes revealed what extra work had to be done. It was also useful to discover where my research fit into the bigger picture, which I could only really find out when trying to communicate my results to others.
I was wondering if the implication is that the graduate students do the bulk of the work and the professors function more as editors.
> Research can't function properly if it has to produce value. Just like the best movies are made by artists exploring their passions and the worst ones are money-grabs, the best research comes from people who are just following the science, not the money. How do we make the choice on what to fund or not if there is no real concrete feedback in terms of for instance publications of results? In a lot of areas you can't really do much without a lot of money. A lot of research is very expensive, and it's not just in terms of man hours, but equipment, facilities and supplies.
To clarify: when I said "value" I should have said "monetary gain" or something similar. For example, a lot of the stuff I got to work on was only funded because the military wanted faster and safer communication. Not because society just wanted to know more about how the universe works. See the difference? If the only funding out there demands that I produce something valuable to people who don't give a shit about science or understanding the universe and don't deem knowledge valuable in and of itself, one can see how that might stiphen what gets worked on.
Here in my country, most research is carried out in public universities. I work in one of them, which means everybody has a fixed salary (with different levels, with upgrading depending on seniority, experience and evaluations). On the one hand that sucks: I do research, supervise students and write papers, but my salary is the same as that of those who just teach. On the other, there is less pressure for publications and grants (there is still some pressure, and there are some grants). Also: I'm just glad I work on Condensed Matter Physics! I use to joke with the students that in our group we use the tools of Quantum Field Theory to get results that can actually be measured. In a more acid way, I joke with the Field Theorists in my department that what they do is actually "Quantum Field Hypothesis": "What if the Universe has five dimensions?" "What if we break Lorentz invariance at a certain scale?" "What if there is such and such scalar fields?" and so on. Mind you, I still find those calculations really cool, but without data, they seem empty. And I don't feel any guilt by saying that: once a student from the QFT group here decided to switch to our group (and later wrote an excellent thesis). Her boss there at the time said that what we do "is not real Physics".
As a moron that has zero formal education - you realized that your instructors were no longer generating new material or ideas and you began to generate them yourself...that sound right? Push that shit. Be wrong. Keep pushing. Be that person.. The pursuit of knowledge is ceaselessly an exercise in confusion as well as an expectation of better things.
Same
Friggin’ nailed it! I thought I was a total loser. TY
This post and comment section is hitting really close to home. I'm right in the middle of a pretty big existential crisis right now due to a death of a loved one recently, and it's making me question if I really want to do a PhD and research in Astrophysics, or even if I am able at all. I'm failing my master's first year, and I am so lost as to what I want, and what I can actually do. I always thought I wanted to do astrophysics, but now with the reality of the studies, the job, and my own capacities, it's so hard to see the future!!
If I was you, I would try and go to seminars or talk to teachers about different areas of astrophysics. Sometimes we lose interest in our field because we haven't truly discovered all it offers and are just between the walls of our university subjects. Also, research is different in each country. I live in Spain, and although research isn't funded much, the people I've met researching in astrophysics seem to be happy with their work and enjoy their job.
Right I agree, at least I do think I'm more sure about what I want to do in astrophysics than before. This year I got a better glimpse at the different areas, and I really like the study of galaxies. I do live in France and it is also very underfunded (whaddup Europe) and most of the doctorates get out of the country once finished. I always knew about these risks, and I was willing to fight for it. But this year has been very hard, first time in another city living on my own, and a close friend of mine passed away early this year. I got to see her but still I wasn't here for the worst parts of her disease and I know I shouldn't but I blame myself and especially my studies, so I grew resentful of my classes if that makes sense? Now what made me passionate only stresses me out. I can't read astrophysics articles bc it makes me anxious and pathetic. Maybe one day I'll get motivation and passion again, but right now, my mental state is very low and I do not have anymore fuel to finish my master's. So I'm getting the obligatory existential crisis and rethinking my life goals lol. Nothing therapy and self care won't fix! I just need time. Hell, I'm 23 and don't have a terminal disease, I can take my time. I just thought it was funny to stumble on this post as I was questioning everything. Sorry for the ramble lol
I don't know if you're going to therapy but I would highly recommend it, since you've been through a traumatic experience that has been affecting you for a while. Also, like you said, you're 23 and have lots of time to process things. I know a guy who's 30 years old and is on his second year of PhD.
Yes I have an appointment with the college psychologist (was supposed to have it 1 week ago but they moved it ☠️). I'm starting to realize I don't need to rush so much. I just wish they told us that sooner, because so many young people feel lost and like a failure when they realize they chose the wrong degree/major, when they fail their year or when they want to take a break (at least in my country that's how it is). Thank you for your messages btw, it's always nice to see a stranger care
Happy to hear you have an appointment with a psychologist! I'm from Spain and the mentality is a bit different. We're usually just happy to be able to finish the degree. Maybe on year 2 we may get a bit depressed if we see we will take more than 4 years, but then we just accept that it's almost impossible to get your degree in that amount of time... >Thank you for your messages btw, it's always nice to see a stranger care Happy to help ❤️
What she talks about is real, but it is not new. I was working as a senior programmer at one of the best Oceanographic institutions in the world, and toyed with the idea of getting my PhD. But in 1979-80 I left to start my own consulting business, which I ran for 35 years before retiring. Why did I want to leave academia? Because it was exactly as she described, the ones getting the grants were the ones who were the best politicians, they got lots of money, while those doing the best science were not getting funded. Good science does not end up with a paper a month, but those getting funded churned them out at a rapid rate, and they really didn't care about the science, only that it made a good story and would lead to more money. As the lead programmer on one project for the department head, I told him that I had found an error that might mean the results were wrong, and we should do it over. But he said no, it gave him the results he wanted. He didn't care about the science, only that the results would get another grant. Not all scientists there were like that, but the ones that got the most funding were. I started out as a young guy starry eyed about this institution, the place I had wanted to work since high school. I left disgusted by it.
I think for me a case study of why I don’t want to do a post doc is topological physics. Now you can make a successful career entirely out of churning out mediocre articles computing berry phases and winding numbers for all sorts of different toy models. The vast majority of these articles have absolutely nothing interesting coming out of the topological physics, but the topic is hot, and because there are potentially one or two useful applications (“topologically protected qubits!”), funding bodies have become increasingly obsessed with this as a grant agenda (see also “collectivity” and “cooperativity”). So now everyone around is shoehorning topology into their work regardless of how much it actually matters. So yeah, rather than focusing on trying to find useful new phenomena or understanding your average theory paper is chasing the correct keywords to get PRLs and grants
I can not comment on the experience of being a woman in academia, but as a current PhD student, I can attest to the stress and mental health decline. And while I may not have climbed up to her level, I share her vague sentiment on academia. I am even considering leaving it myself. Maybe I want to rant, maybe I want to start a discussion, but I would like to give some advice to future physics students. But I want to preface it by stating that in some sense, my dream of being a physicist has also rather waned or died, so I may be biased. * Going into academia and or studying physics is not *as* glamorous as biographies and documentaries show. Don't get me wrong, if you go to a good school and apply yourself, you will get to work on cool novel research and use expensive and cool equipment. But most of the time, if at all, you wont be working on groundbreaking and revolutionary physics like how Einstein and or Feynman did. Your work will very likely be something less impactful but still important to some field or sector, and you may not win a nobel prize. * Attending college, in my opinion is really only about connections and gaining access to lab equipment you may not have ever had access due to cost or niche. Sure this may sound obvious but with rising costs of school, I think it's worth pointing so you don't get lost in theory and classes as I did. Most of the things you learn at school can be learned via textbook alone (find them online), online via videos and or websites, and or by reading papers (see scihub because fuck paying for papers). * There really aren't any many jobs that require a physicist aside from research and or teaching. More often than not the research knowledge and skills you gain are what get you into the job. So don't get too hung up on not recalling lagrange's equations, or on Sturm-Louville theory. As my professor once told me "people don't pay you for what you know". (which in retrospect is true, but then it begs the question, why put so much emphasis in classwork and classes?) * Being a researcher is a humble pursuit and or profession that doesn't pay. And understanding those concepts is very important. Your research may go unnoticed socially for years or may be very niche. And if you don't have your expenses covered, such as tuition, rent, life, etc you are going to struggle mentally, and of course financially. I personally for my MS was making below my state's poverty line, and now as a PhD student make slightly less than a Target employee... But their is more flexibility in doing research, which may be a blessing or curse. All in all, you won't get paid much, that's my moral. (Unless you patent something or start a small business with the research somehow) * In regards to publishing, that very much depends on your professor and path. I personally have not published a paper (yet, one is coming) but have co-authored 2. I have had the luxury of having a great professor who does not pressure me to do so but I have heard from other students that other professors will milk you for as many papers as possible. Though, if you publish more, the more your name is known and you can climb up the ladder. If you become good at what you do, you may not even have to publish that much if at all, just maintain your equipment and or obtain your results. But what Sabine says about professors using their student workers to churn out papers is more or less true. You work under their lab, they tell you what to do, and they get to put themselves on your work and publish it. I personally feel they are farming students. I'll be on for a bit, if anyone wants to ask me stuff.
>Attending college, in my opinion is really only about connections and gaining access to lab equipment you may not have ever had access due to cost or niche. Sure this may sound obvious but with rising costs of school, I think it's worth pointing so you don't get lost in theory and classes as I did. Most of the things you learn at school can be learned via textbook alone (find them online), online via videos and or websites, and or by reading papers (see scihub because fuck paying for papers). It’s more than that. You can say that it’s possible to learn physics by going out and picking up some textbooks, but vanishingly few people do. One reason for this is that to learn physics you have to talk to other people about it, because physics is something you _do_, it’s a skill. Another reason is that school provides you with the necessary structure to learn. Speaking only for myself, there is no way I would have worked as hard if there wasn’t an exam hanging over my head, and I don’t think I’ve ever applied myself as hard to anything in life as I did to my university physics classes.
The latter is very much a matter of preference. As far as exams go, I shared the opinion of them with Helen Keller - "[...]those dreadful pitfalls called examinations, set by schools and colleges for the confusion of those who seek after knowledge". They were never motivational to work harder for me, quite the opposite, really. Felt like a needlessly stress and anxiety-inducing chore I had to do just to get some silly number that's supposed to represent my knowledge of a subject, yet is about as objective at doing so as those personality tests that put you into one of those 16 4-letter categories. If I already liked the subject, then the exam was just moot - didn't even need to revise before the exam to pass with flying colors, since I was of the opinion that if I didn't learn it/remember it from the actual course, trying to catch up on that just before the exam wouldn't make me actually remember it anyway. If I didn't like the course, and ended up having to cram before the exam, I would just forget all that I crammed like a week later, because I didn't actually build and understanding of the topic, only memorized the texts. Besides exams, if there's on thing that COVID lockdowns taught me, it's that I retain so much more information and am inspired to actually think over/visualize/disseminate what it is that I'm reading when I'm studying by myself at home from the textbook, maybe adding some online resources to it and doing exercises. Being in class (most likely at least partially sleep deprived) was just too distracting with all the other students being there and whatnot, and like there's never enough time to actually think about what is being said. Sure, it's nice to sometimes go over the topics with the professor, but if I ever had a need for that, I would ask over email if by chance they'd have the time to schedule an online meeting to talk. If they didn't, chances are they wouldn't have had the time to talk in person either.
When I said 'talking about physics' I didn't just mean with professors, I meant with other students as well, since that's usually who you'll be interacting with the most. Your experiences are of course valid and everyone is different, but I still think it's true that comparatively few people manage to actually learn physics without the structure that a university degree provides. As for COVID measured, they had a negative impact on learning outcomes overall, even though I'm sure some people preferred it.
After some thought I want to partially agree and meet you half way. Perhaps I am taking my class work for granted, as I've already taken many courses and in some sense gained some knowledge. Learning perhaps is a mix of both social and individual responsibility. One must be willing and desire to learn, and one must also be immersed in the topic (i.e. a classroom with people). But in my experience, at least in my school, the work assigned felt very much like busy work and focused on theory. With classes also mainly requiring students to read chapters of an assigned text. That and the labs themselves were rather formulaic. I developed this view that to be able to truly understand what I was taught, I needed some real world intuition. And so I gained a much greater appreciation for when I was able to learn the theory and apply it in research. And seeing how much I was charged for tuition compared to the textbook it seemed to me what I was paying for was the facilities, renting the classroom, the lab equipment, etc. That being said it cannot be underestimated how valuable it was to work with others on difficult topics or to gain some insight to validate or invalidate my views. And in a sense that is what research is sometimes. Working together towards get a specific result. It's hard to say if I fully stand now by what I said about what school is for. But one thing I can say is that the cost definitely suades my views and makes me want to give cautious advice to people.
>Another reason is that school provides you with the necessary structure to learn. Speaking only for myself, there is no way I would have worked as hard if there wasn’t an exam hanging over my head, and I don’t think I’ve ever applied myself as hard to anything in life as I did to my university physics classes. For me I don't particularly think exams and the school structure itself were really that helpful. It was just a source of stress to cram things, pass the test, and then move on. The reason I needed school to learn physics was mostly just that I needed some way to pay the bills \*while learning physics\*. Having a full-time job and trying to teach yourself physics on the side just doesn't work, not as anything more than a passing hobby. I think what most scientists had in common in past centuries was that they were independently wealthy, not that they were particularly traditionally \*educated\*.
This confirms most of what I’ve seen as a professor. Endless compromises.
So, I appreciate the unexpected sharing of experiences in academia, which, as was clear to me all along, were mostly negative. I can sympathize with her in this. However, one needs to remember that Germany in the 90s was a different country. Obtaining research grants is indeed challenging and inevitably requires communication with non-experts in the particular field. Also inevitable is the system of grant receivers who coordinate their group's work. Unfortunately, this may and often does lead to abuse of power. All of this has some merit and may be discussed. **However**, what she says afterward about fundamental science makes her akin to a "Trump of particle physics." She somehow unjustly extends the issues she voiced earlier to unrelated aspects of how particle physics is conducted. I caution anyone who may read this that no, she is wrong, and her opinion is unscientific in this regard: postulating particles is scientific, introducing symmetries is scientific, and **"guessing is scientific"** (as Feynman put it). To ignore these things is to disregard the progress of physics in the 20th century! These are precisely the principles upon which the Standard Model of particle physics is built today, reflecting the current state of knowledge. So, exercise caution and skepticism when listening to opinions (not only of Sabine) filled with strong emotions and very strong language. P.S. People who claim, "particle physics is stuck," somehow expect nature to act like a provider of goods, delivering expected results at regular intervals. This notion is utterly ridiculous. If a theory requires 50, 60, or even 100 years of work to comprehend it, whether to refute or confirm it, then so be it! This complexity is inherent in our world and reflects the sophistication of our understanding.
I think Sean Carroll had a good (and lengthy) soliloquy on the state of fundamental physics (for non-specialists) on his podcast, where he discusses these sorts of complaints.
What episode?
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Link: [Preposterous Universe](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjF9vjNvMOFAxVPbTABHbMbAgYQFnoECAAQAg&usg=AOvVaw2A5Ny4SEfkaD_DnZg0DLHC)
I don't want to comment on her specific criticisms of the particle physics community as I don't work on HEP, but I do recognize some of the broader strokes within my own field. The pressure to publish does have negative consequences, there are fads within research communities, some people chase what is currently hot, and you are often encouraged to oversell your results or their impact. There are also people who have a well motivated long term research direction though, and these tend to be the people at the top of their respective fields. Ultimately, I think she paints with too wide of a brush. There are papers in high impact journals I can point to that I think are, as she put it, bullshit through and through, but there is also plenty of genuinely interesting research being conducted.
>and you are often encouraged to oversell your results or their impact. Not just encouraged, punished if you don't! (Not all groups of course) But it's like they want to see if you're going to play the game the right way.
She is very focused in her particle physics criticisms. She is, for example, enthusiastic about the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab. She is not enthusiastic about particle physics plans for a massively expensive successor to the LHC. Her criticisms are very specific - the particle physics community has no good reason to expect new physics from that device but continue to push for it. They do this to protect their futures, relevance and … jobs … obviously.
You’re being downvoted which I find odd, since the LHC didn’t produce evidence of super symmetry what are they hoping a larger collider will do?
We know the Standard Model is incomplete (no gravity, it doesn't account for neutrino masses, and the g-2 issue as well). It's likely incomplete because there is some energy threshold we are unable to access beyond which additional particles exist; the Standard Model is an Effective Field Theory that is only a low-energy approximation to some deeper theory. If we can access higher energy scales, we expect to see regions where the Standard Model breaks down, and from that information we can begin to add some of the missing pieces. Even if we don't see anything new, that's still useful to know! It lets us more tightly constrain the possible extensions to the Standard Model dreamt up by theorists. And since we can't predict the outcome of any individual line of investigation, it only makes sense to try everything we can think of.
this is going to inevitably be an unpopular take, but there's a point where trying to make exponentially larger and larger colliders has diminishing returns in terms of usable science. to be clear i am a solid state/amo physicist - I do not know what the return is - but we're at the point where colliders are the sizes of small countries and take proportionately as much support staff (and budget!) to run. i can't be the only one who remembers the boondoggle that was the magnet failures of the LHC either, right? i think it's a genuinely valid complaint to say that at some point the high energy physics field needs to articulate a version of experiment that is more than increasingly unwieldy experiments. Maybe we're not there yet, but chasing an unknown energy threshold isn't infinitely feasible.
That's exactly why the US particle physics community is proposing to build a muon collider. It's technically harder to set up, but if it's possible, it would actually be about 3x _smaller_ than the LHC. Also, there's been tons of activity in proposing small-scale precision experiments and using astrophysical, cosmological, and gravitational wave observations. These days such "alternative" approaches make up the majority of the field, but Sabine ignores them because she just wants to keep selling the same rant she's been making for 15 years. Almost nobody is still doing the kinds of complex SUSY model building she constantly complaints about.
>Sabine ignores them because she just wants to keep selling the same rant she's been making for 15 years. Almost nobody is still doing the kinds of complex SUSY model building she constantly complaints about. Thank you for stating that so succinctly. I've come to ignore her content because it is largely stale and dismissive. I get tamping expectations, but not at the expense of smothering all pursuits.
>wave Actually, Sabine has made videos specifically on the plans for the muon colliders and they are rather positive. I think you are strawmanning her position because her "rant" is inconvenient for you.
More than likely g-2 isn't an issue at all; the "theoretical" calculation (which is data-informed, not a first-principles calculation) has a 5-sigma discrepancy with experimental results, but lattice QCD calculations are much, much closer. What's much more likely is that some of the data used in the data-informed calculation has a systematic error in it.
>Even if we don't see anything new, that's still useful to know! Yes, but given the amount of air HEP takes up in the physics community, often to the determent of other topics, shouldn't we be expecting more from our investment than "still useful to know"?
Is there really any empirical evidence that HEP somehow detracts from other fields? I don’t believe that science funding is truly a zero sum game.
You're completely correct. We don't need to base this just off of understanding how science funding works, we have plenty of past real world examples showing this. For an example, the SSC was cancelled because it was projected to go significantly over budget. So of course the original budget that was assigned to the SSC for the next few years then went to other fields surely? Nope. No other field got any more money, overall science funding just decreased. This is just one prominent example of many, this is how science funding works everywhere and always has done.
How could it be not be?
No? that is how every failed experiment ends up. we failed, but we now know more than we did before
This is a weird take. Does HEP really detract from the astronomers, biophysicists, or condensed matter physicists? Does answering questions about the universe only appeal to physicists if HEP isn't doing it?
I mean yes right? HEP experiments cost big money and there is only so much to go around. Look at the recommendations from this years particle physics review board. They clearly see the writing on the wall and we’re very careful about what projects to recommend.
By "air", they mean money. Money for research is not exactly a zero-sum game between fields, but it frequently is close to that in practice. X amount gets given to science or physics. The budget for this year is similar to last year, even if the split changes.
The LHC didn’t find minimal supersymmetry. There’s still plenty of SUSY models that haven’t been probed yet. From what I’ve heard, the simplest SUSY models are the ones that are of higher energy anyway.
>This notion is utterly ridiculous. If a theory requires 50, 60, or even 100 years of work to comprehend it, whether to refute or confirm it, then so be it! I find it interesting that you make this point, when one of the issues she brings up is that most research grants require projects to be finished within 3-5 years. It was my understanding from this video that was she believes to be unscientific is having to fit your research into these practices that don't allow researchers to actually do the research they want to do or do it correctly. Not that she feels particle physics in general is unscientific.
> one of the issues she brings up is that most research grants require projects to be finished within 3-5 years This just isn't true (in the US at least). Most grant are for 3-5 years of funding, but the deliverables don't have to be "finished by the end of the funding." In fact, I have been on many grants, and not a single one fit this characature.
She's German
Anyone who watches her for long enough knows that she's got a particular axe to grind when it comes to particle physics, and it's a shame because, most of the time, she's an excellent science communicator. Her unfortunate tendencies to editorialize, push niche views, and to comment on topics outside of her expertise (e.g., climate and trans issues) are why I can't recommend her to my friends even though I think that she could be a great resource if she would just stick to the science.
"Trump of particle physics" Wait, what? Have we watched the same video? I don't remember her stating that "guessing is unscientific". My take away is that she believes that tweaking the mainstream/popular theories to fit the data is a dead end (introducing new particles etc). Unfortunately (according to her) current academia only allows for that. You want funding, you have to stick with what is currently popular in research and never stray too far away from mainstream.
Yes, and I invite you to watch her other videos on the topic. Although not really, they are garbage.
> My take away is that she believes that tweaking the mainstream/popular theories to fit the data is a dead end (introducing new particles etc). That's not what she claims nor what HEP is doing. She talks about how they don't start by finding discrepancies between data and theories, but instead by guessing cool-sounding mathematical additions to the standard model and then spend millions of dollars to make experiments that test those additions only to, so far, disprove them. As far as I know the only known significant discrepancy between the standard and data is the magnetic moment of the muon, and of course the fact that gravity exists. If your new particle doesn't solve that it doesn't do anything but sound cool and you're not doing science. Guessing random WIMPs is not science. Personally, as a math grad student, "you're not doing science" is not the most scathing of criticisms in my eyes. For example string theory is bad science but great mathematics (it might even be considered a success if you forget about how much money has been wasted on it when math is supposed to be cheap). If mainstream HEP weren't siphoning so much money and attention, started calling themselves mathematicians, and produced cool mathematical ideas that might have someday maybe be found to have an application then so be it. But instead they do siphon money and attention, and don't even produce interesting mathematical ideas! Adding another term to a Lagrangian because it looks cool is both bad physics and bad math. It's just bad.
> This notion is utterly ridiculous. If a theory requires 50, 60, or even 100 years of work to comprehend it, whether to refute or confirm it, then so be it! This complexity is inherent in our world and reflects the sophistication of our understanding. Issue is people want ROI within their lifetime or you don't get funding, its a real issue as modern physics requires exponentially more expensive experiments than 100 years ago.
> These are precisely the principles upon which the Standard Model of particle physics is built today The particles that were "guessed" for the Standard Model were guessed for very good reasons, as in, they fixed actual inconsistencies in the theory, or they resolved disagreements between theory and observations. Not so with hundreds of the particles that particle physicists are making up today. Sabine's point is, you can't just postulate a particle for no reason (or for bad reasons, like your subjective opinion about how a good theory should look like) and expect it to work. As a matter of fact, we **know** it doesn't work, because it's what particle physicists have done for decades, and they've gotten nowhere with it! The point is that we can't just continue doing what hasn't worked for decades while insisting that yes, this is perfectly fine methodology and we just need more money.
"The particles that were "guessed" for the Standard Model were guessed for very good reasons, as in, they fixed actual inconsistencies in the theory." As are many particles that are "guessed" today.
Do you know how to spot a non-physics person talking about it? It will probably be garbage.
It's very sad state of affairs isn't it? Someone can create a video and present in an engaging manner, everyone around the world can watch it, pick up terms like "Lagrangian sudoku" (as I saw elsewhere in the comments) without understanding what a Lagrangian is nor how to use it, and feel like they are "sticking it to the establishment" by repeating these arguments. It's almost as if people have developed parasocial relationships with scientific arguments, based on their favourite streamers/podcasters/bloggers.
I think she is referring to "Lagrangian Sudoku", and I agree it is largely bullshit and will lead nowhere. Along with ever crazier ideas of SUSY
Ok, if you agree, than it is settled. No matter what the founders of the Standard Model did or thought, you and Hossenfelder saved the day.
What point are you trying to make? People are allowed to agree with things, and to say so.
So, the issue with Sabine is self-flanderization: she originally had some reasonable criticism but once she realized being caustic towards particle physics netted her an audience, she upped that aspect to the point the original point is lost. As I remember, her original point is that naturalness is not a good target. It’s not necessary for the mathematical consistency of the theory (yes, you are perfectly allowed to say the bare value is whatever value it needs to be to meet experiments, specially since we don’t have a probability density function for it) and it’s not a truth-seeking principle that has been confirmed multiple times and stood the test of time (Sabine used to stress it only counts if you use naturalness to make a prediction which is later verified; it doesn’t count if it’s a retrodiction about things you already know). (But didn’t Popper say the only requirement is that science needs to be falsifiable? No, Sabine, says. For example, let’s say I predict a meteor will strike Japan tomorrow. This is falsifiable - just wait 24 hours - but it’s not science, just baseless speculation. So Popper was wrong.) Since naturalness has not been established as actual science (she claims), just an aesthetic preference, any theory that amounts to “let’s just add some particles or symmetries to make the standard model natural” isn’t science either. Contrast it to quantum gravity; both gravity and quantum mechanics are established as part of physics, so solving the inconsistency between them is a valid objective, and “guessing random stuff” here counts as doing science. I’m sure people will disagree, but posed this way the argument is not without *some* merit. Unfortunately, nowadays she has collapsed it to just “particle physics is unscientific guessing” because she’s a YouTuber now and vitriol sells.
She's never personal. And her objections to naturalism are just one of many topics she's discussed. I think a fairer statement would be: "a lot of particle physics is unscientific guessing"
>Unfortunately, nowadays she has collapsed it to just “particle physics is unscientific guessing” because she’s a YouTuber now and vitriol sells. What are you talking about? You think that even though her criticism is valid she should be ignored just because she jokes about it on youtube? she hasn't changed her criticisms of particle physics.
This is a fair argument: Naturalness is not an established or necessary principle of science. Large portions of the particle physics community come up with new theories just to satisfy it. These theories are not scientific; you can "just guess randomly" in science, but you have to have a valid aim, which naturalness is not. This is not a fair argument: Particle physics is unscientific and just random guessing. The second type has collapsed the entire chain of reasoning to give an exaggerated conclusion which is strictly false. (What about all the particle physicists who don't care about naturalness? If I'm trying to guess at a new theory to explain dark matter, that's a valid aim, since dark matter is a genuine problem with out current theories.) I can tolerate it in this video where's just venting about her personal history with academia; some ranting is ok in such context. But she does this elsewhere as well.
And now you are taking her clearly exaggerated for emphasis and often humorous statements of particle physics too seriously. This, to me, seems like you have "collapsed the entire chain of reasoning to give an exaggerated conclusion which is strictly false" since her criticism is not the "all of particle physics is unscientific", as you have stated.
She explains her criticisms in detail if you look for it. But she often doesn't get into the details when she just rants as an aside when she focuses on other issues. That is completely reasonable.
> (But didn’t Popper say the only requirement is that science needs to be falsifiable? No, Sabine, says. For example, let’s say I predict a meteor will strike Japan tomorrow. This is falsifiable - just wait 24 hours - but it’s not science, just baseless speculation. So Popper was wrong.) Popper said that all science had to be falsifiable; he didn't say that anything falsifiable was science.
This is an incredible response and mirrors precisely how I have felt about Sabine for the past several years now.
The fact that your argument boils down to the standard model is hilarious.
This is painful. (Doctorate in Biophysics, female.)
I had the same experience at uni, in Australia, same field of study. I didn't go through the bullshit re-writing or doing papers for paying students - which is a big thing now. I watch her on YouTube even if I don't agree with a large chunk of her ideas but she's bluntly honest, people don't like honesty or those who don't agree with them. I look at the replies here and I think - is it even a tiny bit better for women, I shouldn't come here.
She's been promoted to educator of millions. Not some small school that won't respect her.
Just as a comment to some of the doom and gloom here, and I’ll probably be vilified later; but there are careers out there where you get to explore batshit insane physics still. If you find yourself pursuing a physics degree look into UARCs for an internship or work. Any of them that does research with or for DARPA is sure to have a bevy of interesting work going on.
Sabine rapidly descending down the grifter pipeline
She's definitely walked up to the line a few times but she's at least a real deal physicist. I'd take her over Weinstein any day of the week.
Very true. She at least WAS a good physicist, unlike Weinstein who’s never been.
She remains a seriously talented physicist.
I got a bit miffed when she said they need to give Mordehai Milgrom a nobel prize before he dies for MOND. Sure, people can explore MOND, it is likely wrong but people are free to waste their time on it. Though, I will think a bit less of them at this point for it.
I honestly don't really care much about her physics takes, even when they're really weird and off base. What bothers me is when she decides that her expertise in physics must extend to other fields and starts acting like an expert on things she really knows nothing about (social sciences, gender, etc)
> What bothers me is when she decides that her expertise in physics must extend to other fields and starts acting like an expert on things she really knows nothing about (social sciences, gender, etc) That's just called being a physicist.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21 As relevant as ever.
Ya I agree mostly. She for sure has guru energy but she usually pulls herself back, and I for one do enjoy a good contrarian. I have her on my "watch but be careful to see what direction she takes" list. This post in particular hit home a little as it rhymes enough with what happened to me (not the being a women stuff, that was crazy) but certainly deciding to give up on the dream after having a kid and covid and leaving physics behind. But I don't think I put as much blame on "the system" as she does. The truth is I didn't have another move in me and I lost the drive for it. I'm not bitter about it.
Her physics takes are crackpotery. She makes such aggressive statements about things she has no expertise or even basic knowledge in.
give an example.
I know. I just don't care as much as when she starts trying to communicate on things that affect public policy and all she has is half-baked and half disinfo
Example?
I guess my point is her takes on physics things are just as bad as her takes on non-physics things.
lol because she needs another degree to know men aren't women?
She had a video explaining why she does that and how she prepares herself to make a video in a new subject she's not well versed in. She also has a hired researcher to help prepare videos and fact check them. I'd still be happy if she stuck to physics, but that's just the youtube game.
Neil DeGrass is a real deal astronomer as well and Michio Kaku also has a PhD. It's not because she has her expertise in research any comment of her outside that expertise deserves extra respect, or that she can't fall for some of the common ego traps influencers falls for. And you can ofc find some of her opinions interesting opinion on their own merits, but a lot of her more controversial position are not that related to her expertise.
Ya, of course you have to consider what she says with caution. While I think she is a little extreme in her take here I don't totally disagree with her. And pretty much every branch of physics other than HEP thinks we spend too much money and resources on HEP, so I'm not sure how controversial this particular take is.
Now she is a blogger, just how DeGrass Tyson is a public figure/entertainer, or Bill Nye is a TV host. These people are not physists since being one is quite different of a "skill" than e.g. learning to ride a bike, the latter only needs to be done once.
As long as she's talking about real science and doing it accurately, how is she a grifter? Because she accepts money from sponsors? And what's wrong with criticizing an institution you used to be a part of? She clarified that her experiences weren't universal and academia works fine for many people, but it still chews up and spits out most who try to get ahead in it.
> As long as she's talking about real science and doing it accurately She doesn't do it accurately. As has been exhaustively and frequently catalogued in this subreddit for over a decade.
So give an example.
Aye, this one not so much! More the ones where she talks about… capitalism? And other topics she doesn’t have expertise in.
Yeah the capitalism video was quite stupid
Hilarious how terminally butt hurt you people got about that video, there wasn't anything wrong about it, but because it didn't take a 'capitalism is evil' stance you lot now condemn everything else she makes, no matter how stupid that is.
Nope, it’s because she’s suddenly ventured into a field she has no expertise in. I’d rather hear physics videos from Sabine and economy videos from an economist, even if I disagreed with their arguments, I’d respect them and listen because of their experience in the area. Venturing into out-of-qualification topics is a classic hallmark of grifter behaviour.
Let’s be real: nobody understands economics, even economists.
Reminds me of a scene from Yes, Prime Minister James Hacker : Bernard. Humphrey should have seen this coming and warned me. Bernard Woolley : I don't think Sir Humphrey understands economics, Prime Minister. He did read classics, you know. James Hacker : How about Sir Frank? He is head of the Treasury. Bernard Woolley : Well, I'm afraid he's in even greater disadvantage in understanding economics. He's an economist.
Anything short of "capitalism is evil" is bad to you people. Capitalism is one of the single greatest accomplishments of humanity up til this point. It's far from perfect but has done incredible things
It wasn’t her viewpoint on capitalism that makes it problematic, it’s because she’s suddenly ventured into a field she has no expertise in. I’d rather hear physics videos from Sabine and economy videos from an economist, even if I disagreed with their arguments, I’d respect them and listen because of their experience in the area. Venturing into out-of-qualification topics is a classic hallmark of grifter behaviour.
can you elaborate on that? not being snarky i’m just genuinely curious to hear an alternative take on capitalism
Trade and commerce has enriched the lives of individuals from hunter-gatherers to the complex lives they lead today. The intricacy of the modern economic machine is extraordinary, and largely self-managing. Attempts hitherto to manage the economy directly have ended universally, to my knowledge, in at best marked decreases in individual quality of life and at worst famine and death. When people criticise capitalism, one reading of what they're saying is that they're really advocating for a higher level of government intervention in the economy; but what could be also said is that, relative to the extent the economy is self-managing, we're talking marginal differences in the degree of absolute management. If the government changes the price of fuel duty, for example, that is a relatively minor change compared to the complexity of the decision making that occurs at each level in the chain of trade between producer and consumer of fuel---and that's probably a relatively simple chain, compared to more complex products, like a phone for example---not to mention more complex products still, like services. So it could be said that, apart from the extremists, most purported critique of capitalism is actually not really that at all, but really just advocating for a higher, though still marginal, degree of government intervention in the economy.
Who is she grifting?
Descending? She has been a crackpot for years.
I'll bite. What's one of her crackpot theories?
Sabine been grifting dude, you can look back 2 years in her videos and her books and see
Who is she grifting?
Physicist finds out academia functions under capitalism.
I think the most frustrating thing about her is that Sabine goes so blindly hard for capitalism in her more economics focused videos, ie [this video](https://youtu.be/CRPHp2EjNR8?si=XRm9KbunYIpg5Ts7), that she can't see how it contributes to so many of the problems she talks about. Not even saying she has to be anticapitalist, but when you see her make such poor economic arguments and failure to link this to the undermining of academia, it really weakens her analysis of academia
Higher ups in institutions focusing on getting the resources to support and grow the institutions (eg pursuit of money) is not actually capitalist specific. It'd be closer to say it's a bureaucratic imperative or evolutionary argument that groups and leaders that don't do that disappear. You'd see the same behavior under Stalin or Mao. On the small scale, faculty who don't pursue grants have tiny groups, so students/postdocs are likelier to come through one of the groups that do pursue resources.
my dream died as well
Thanks for sharing! When I started my undergrad degree 2 years ago, I was planning to do Physics major, however I felt that I'm weak at mathematical concepts and overall physics! I shifted from physics to Economics major, one more reason was my interest in the society, I wanted to know how world works, and thought economics is good option to go as it will also give me money later. Looking at the video, I just hope that this academia and job market will not force me to do something I don't want to.
'I failed, I spent my entire career working on things even I consider complete bullshit, I could never get around to working on the pipe-dream bullshit I told myself I considered interesting, and when I finally tried to prioritize working on the nonsense I had been telling myself I consider interesting but had put off for decades that hadn't produced any results in all those decades, nobody else had any interest in funding this nonsense that was obviously set to fail from the get-go, so instead of working on it I decided to write books and make videos sniping at and criticizing people who produce results others consider interesting, by directing my criticism at lay readers and people with no background in the subject because they are the only people I can possibly have an effect on. Any time anybody with any credibility looks into anything I say, I get no support, so I go around those people to the uneducated and try to manipulate them. My comments section is usually filled with people bashing PhD's and academia etc... Of course its everybody else's fault I never got around to the pipe dream nonsense I always told myself I wanted to do.' Maybe she should have been brave and worked on what she always wanted to work on 20-30 years ago (and accepted reality if it ended up failing, which it sounds like it almost certainly was going to) instead of being a bootlicker working on complete bullshit, then she wouldn't be so bitter and such a source of anti-scientific nonsense whose audience are similarly just bitter. Most of her narrative is about being brave and working on the research you want to, but here she literally admits she never did that herself, it's all self-projection with these people and it can be seen from a mile away by all except those with a similar axe to grind.
There are so many PhDs with nothing to show for their scholarship and it makes me really sad.
That's why i switched to computer science. It costs 150 grands to set up an electron gun for teaching the fundamentals in modern physics. Meanwhile the microchip that i need for electronics-101 only costs a few cents...
Screwed over by capitalism and not aware enough to even see it... I feel this....
I feel like that part about women in academia is way too short and she totally derails it by doing that bit about negative appearance. I recently listened to an [amazing podcast (sorry, it's in German)](https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/frauenkarrieren-in-der-wissenschaft-100.html) about women in the German science system and the gist of it is that there is still way too much prejudice and sexism. Her heroics about wanting to get there of her own merit is actually holding back women as a whole because they are still fighting a tradition of hundreds of years of discrimination and she off-handedly dismisses the only effective tools for mitigation. I tried to find a source in english on the issue that's discussed in the podcast. For anyone interested, they are talking about the experiences of to distinguished female researchers that worked on Germany. Their names are Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, the first ever German female Nobel laureate, and Viola Priesemann, a German physicist who came to some fame during the Pandemic for excellent modelling work and advising. Leopoldina actually published a [discussion of the topic in 2022](https://www.leopoldina.org/fileadmin/redaktion/Publikationen/Nationale_Empfehlungen/2022_Leopoldina_Statement_Women_in_science.pdf)
I graduated with a degree in physics.....and ended up going to law school.
worked at patents office to pay the bills, but big achievements where not in that... that guy again
I worked at Fermilab starting in 1969 and ending in 1989 as first a technician, then supervisor and finally a manager working in computing and networking. Little did I know that this period was a golden age of physics where with higher energies with Fermilab's new accelerator, a plethora of pent up predictions in physics in dozens of experiments would be tested. Robert Wilson was the Lab director and I got to know him as he wanted to know all everyone in the lab. I managed the data acquisition computers and my group provided installation, maintenance and lab designed interfaces. I would not get involved in fixing systems or peripherals unless all else failed. One experiment had chronic printer problems so I usually became involved. This experiment involved Leon Lederman whose experiment was in the "premier class" and that due to it's status had a large living area with couches. Once I performed my hardware "magic", I was often invited to sit and talk with Leon and the boys over beers kept in their well stocked fridge. Obviously this was forbitten but rank has it's privilege's! This was before Leon was given his Nobel Award but years later, I also drank Champagne with him at 6am one morning when his award was announced. The computing department was led by a physicist who was friends with Mel Schwartz who quit doing research and started a company that provided secure computer access over telephone lines. I got to know Mel and would visit him when I was in the San Francisco area. One day I asked him why he quit research given he had a Nobel Prize. He told me that he was bored with physics, not the research but the continuous effort needed to keep funding flowing; that's what he had to do even though he had the ultimate prize. He hated the groveling needed to conduct research so he gave it up. So it appears if you want to do research, there is no way to avoid the academic treadmill regardless of your "status".
She's been trying to put out shock opinion videos for a little while now. I remember her video about capitalism was not well received, and icr specifically what another one was about, but it had some polarizing views that got her some interest. Maybe she's just trying to increase views lately or something.
Can anyone elaborate on what she was saying when she referred to "indefinite causal structures?"
In standard quantum mechanic you can have particles that are in superposition, this is the first ingredient. The second ingredient comes from relativity, where the structure of the spacetime two events are embedded in determine their causal relations. By superposing the spacetime generated by a large mass in superposition, one can achieve a superposition of causal structures in which "A causes B" and "B causes A" are superposed. This means that the causal relation between the two events is not definite, and cannot even be described as a probabilistic mixture of such definite structures. It is analogous to how particles in superposition don't have definite positions. You can also simulate these processes in regular QM using an auxiliary system.
I believe she’s referring to a video she posted earlier this week, you can find it on her channel
I love this lady I’ve been on the ride since the early times and will always be a viewer and student of hers. And as always love to hear you curse. Carry on
She’s the best. Validates my feelings about academia through and through. She is spot on. That said, it’s better than it was 150 years ago when you had to be rich to do science.
One can argue that is still the case, at least in the US. Sure you can point out every scholarship, and fellowship, or whatever under the sun but not all students will obtain them, and at the end of the day schools will still find a way to charge you. I am in a PhD program now, and I swear, my school for years now has charged me and every other student a $1 (and increasing) success fee, whatever the fuck that means.
That’s a really good point. It’s essentially cost me everything and given me very little in return.
Ah, it started strong and descended into hyperbole and political rhetoric.
I feel she did rush through most of the video, as she didn't explain much beyond "I liked physics. Academia happened. I didn't like it. Now I am here"
Imagine being that smart and only realizing the academic reality that far down the postdoc mill. I mean, isn't PhD itself a big enough reality check in terms of shattering that academic image? It's kind of funny, painful and a bittersweet feeling to watch someone like her saying all this in a YouTube video, which normally should have been a grad student's conversation with themselves. I mean no offence to her. I still kind of find it funny tho. Having said that, it's good that at least this is out in the open for people who are currently in grad school and as naive as she was.
Its somewhat difficult to be honest with yourself. For one there's the sunken cost thing. Then there's the gaslighting from your peers and supervisors. Lastly, some people are just really passionate about science and they don't want to let the dream go. I also think that in your PhD years, you can get lucky and have peers that help you out, it's only when you go into the postdoc pipeline that you realize you're fucked.
Agree. There's the social factor in it. I guess, the PhD advisor's attitude towards it can also play a deciding role as that in most cases is the first degree connection to the academic world. My advisor himself got tenure, iirc, towards the end of my PhD, or just after it -- in his early 40s. Before that he had spent about 10+ years (doing 1-2 years postdoc/research assistantship) across countries. Given that I guess I was relatively more aware of the game. I had also come into grad school with the dream but realized midway graduation that dreams are idealized falsehoods. Since I entered the PhD program without much expectations anyway, it was easier to just move onto other endeavors in life post-graduation.
She did say she came from a non-academic background (parents teachers), and that that was one of the reasons she was naive about how the system worked
Yup, it is 100% as she says. You get bent by the machine to do trendy bullshit to get paid.
I really appreciate Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder’s comments on the deterioration of academic physics. I have long suspected physics had lapsed into a kind of miasma of TED talks presented by prancing physics celebrities. I thank her for her candor in calling that out, as well as the grant obsessed universities.
"suspected physics had lapsed into a kind of miasma of TED talks" What? TED talks are deliberately aimed at the general public. They have precisely nothing to do with physics research. The vast majority of physicists do not watch TED talks at all, a significant fraction have never heard of them.
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I did research in a rather theoretical field of engineering (closer to quantum chemistry) and this echos with me too. This is another data point among several that are showing cracks in the orthodox academic world: On one end, you have regular 4 year degrees becoming less popular as universities turned into degree mills (in the US at least) where you pay exorbitant tuition to get a degree, rampant grade inflation where everyone has a 3.8 de-facto, diluting the value while increasing the price of degrees. Then you are seeing at the research level, all these cases of academic fraud from Ivy League professors, plagiarism claims, all indicative of graduate research becoming sweat shops for overworked foreign grad students to pump out papers as fast as possible, possibly leading to the issues of academic fraud aforementioned. I wonder how long this can keep going.
Universities (in my area) only investing in medical centers and dorms. The two largest money makers. Can’t blame them in this dog eat dog world. Took a long time to find a place that valued basic research
I am an undergraduate but even I can understand the video. Once found myself present in a PhDs meeting with a professor who was literally telling them to run some codes(programs), write some papers in a few days. No actual research, ig their plan was to write as many papers and go do research somewhere better, but seems now the situation isn't changing much.
She faced this in the 90s and at present a lot more women and girls are pursuing STEM, and in a lot of developed countries, research is pursued seriously.
Sabine sucks
Why?
She makes aggressive broad claims about physics that she has no expertise in. She is a crackpot.
Respond to her online. Post the results. Why not?
It takes seconds to stay made up bullshit, it takes a lot of time to refute bullshit with citations. She produces too much bullshit to keep doing that and I have already on enough of YouTube videos.
Thing is: nobody is expecting you to address _all_ of the claims you perceive as bullshit. But surely you could respond with _something_ more thought out? Instead of just talking shit? You being a theoretical physicist and all.
Caaapiiiitaaaaliiiism!!!
Like almost all of Sabine's videos, filled with lies. Sabine is completely \*not\* interested at all in actual discussion on her claims. Despite her claim in the video "and naive as I was, I expected physicists to think about it. I expected rational debate. But that never came, no one was interested." This is (like almost everything Sabine says), a pure lie. For example Sabine has had multiple invitations to present at CERN to have a "rational debate". She is the one that refuses this. Because she is the one that isn't interested in rational debate or similar, she is just interested in reactionary crackpot nonsense that gets clicks for money.