science and democracy iii

I'm thrilled to be, for once, quotable!

However ... Lubos is right in the restricted sense that at some

point, maybe several decades after the original thought, it

should be possible to evaluate work in theoretical physics

objectively. We do know, have done for decades, who wins in

Einstein-versus-Lenard.

But this is much too slow to base funding decisions on!

Just how slow is shown by the case of the cosmological constant

- after 80 or 90 years we still don't know whether it was

Einstein's greatest mistake or not.

In the narrow sense of whether it was theoretically a correct

and well-motivated thing to add to the equations, it was not a

mistake - but whether Nature bothers to take notice of

everything that we believe is theoretically correct and

well-motivated is still another question.

Whether a subject is of interest can often not be evaluated in

any way that stands the test of time. In say 1985 you might

have found a consensus that the cosmological constant was not

an interesting thing to be working on. Today it seems that

almost everyone is working on it. (I exaggerate a little.)

I think the most important thing for

not-catastrophically-misguided use of science money is not any

kind of 'free market' (...I'm still unclear how such a thing

might possibly work for government-funded operations - free

markets require many buyers) nor peer review (though that is

needed) - but rather honesty about what has or has not been

achieved, and what may or may not be done in the future.

The worst scandal I can think for science would be not how much

or little money is paid to string theorists or the LHC, even if

both turn out to be useless, but rather if it turned out that

some apparently important results either theoretical or

experimental were simply fabrications and hoaxes. That has

happened in solid state physics (J-H Schoen) and biology

(cloning) but not in fundamental physics.

Smaller versions of such a scandal are provided by exaggerated

statements which often appear in the media (sometimes the

exaggeration is the fault of the media themselves) ... everyone

can think of examples - now science should be precisely about

avoiding exaggeration, shouldn't it?

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