Is String Theory Bad Science and Misleading Hype?

String Theory has been around for 30 years, since the first superstring revolution which made it a contender theory for high-energy physics. It has yet to produce one testable prediction, and no-one is even talking about a decisive experiment that would confirm String Theory while refuting, say, Loop Quantum Gravity. They haven’t even derived the existing Standard Model from String Theory yet, and to understand how bad that is, deriving Newtonian Gravity from General Relativity is now left to the reader as an elementary exercise. It’s really, really serious that literally thousands of super-bright physicists, including the man said to be as smart as Einstein, haven’t shown how to get the current theory of elementary particles from String Theory. But a lot of families get fed off the back of String Theory professorships, and a lot of money gets made by publishers and authors from popularisations and textbooks - even I have both volumes of Polchinski.

I’m fairly confident that String Theory will take the same place in the history of science as epicycles do now. Or maybe phlogiston. (There’s a difference: epicycles can be seen as using a partial Fourier analysis of the planet’s observed orbit – it’s acceptable curve-fitting and inacceptable physics; phlogiston was acceptable but wrong physics.) For the moment, it’s creating enough problems for some people to want to re-define science so that String Theory, with its lack of actual predictions, is still science. Well, they don’t need to. Let’s look at the idea of testability.

Suppose the theory only makes predictions at energy levels that needed a lot of expensive kit, and then Governments cancelled the programme and used the money to save the banks (again). That doesn’t make the theory untestable. Now suppose that there simply isn’t enough money in the world, or ever will be, to build the kit to test the theory. This doesn’t make the theory untestable-in-principle, simply untestable-in-practice. Now suppose it simply wasn’t practically possible to build a piece of kit that would be able to test the theory, cost aside. Same thing: untestable-in-principle, simply untestable-in-practice. The theory is still making empirical predictions. Now suppose that there’s actually no piece of kit that will test the theory, because the kit would use all the energy in the Universe and there would be no-one around to see the results. That’s untestable-in-principle. None of these apply to String Theory.

What applies to String Theory is that the theorists just haven’t come up with a prediction, let alone the budget-busting kit to test it. This could mean

1. The theorists aren’t as smart as they say they are
2. The theorists are as smart as they say they are, but it’s really hard to get a prediction out of all those equations
3. Actually, there aren’t any predictions to be gotten out of the theory. It just doesn’t touch the real world.

It’s worth noting that so far in the history of science, all the Hall-of-Fame theories came with novel predictions, often in the paper that first introduced the theory. I’m stretching the point a bit with electromagnetism, as Maxwell had three shots at it over a couple of decades, but once he embraced the field theory and dumbed the mechanical models for his 1865 paper, that prediction of light as electromagnetic radiation is as carefully contrived a throw-away as you could find. Some of this was, of course, because the pace of life was slower back then, and people could afford to hold back on publication until they had a good prediction. Because a good novel prediction is great for credibility.

Testability comes from Karl Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery. His original objection to Marxism and psychoanalysis was that, no matter what happened, the theorists could always interpret it post-hoc as a success, but not in a way that would make new predictions (that last clause was added by Lakatos). String theory would be untestable in this sense if there was always an ad-hoc way of re-jigging it to explain the result post-hoc. That shows up in the practice of the theorists or the structure of the theory itself. Woit has a few posts where he describes the dodges and retractions of String Theorists in response to actual lack of anything from CERN. Because their ability to feed their children and travel to conferences in exotic places depends on String Theory, it’s pretty clear that nothing would actually make these physicists give up their livelihoods reject String Theory. Until they have somewhere else to go.

Peter Woit’s point is that the String Guys have had enough time and should quit. Lakatos made the point that it is never irrational to carry on working on a degenerating programme, but what is irrational is to deny its track record and continue to hype it as the “only game in town”. The theory may yet yield a prediction that can be tested in this world, but the current bunch of theorists have failed to get it to do so. If they are sensible, they should give it break and go do something else on the taxpayer’s dime. What they do in their spare time is entirely up to them.

In summary:

Is String Theory science? Yes.

Is String Theory a good scientific theory? NO. (Though it might be)

Are String Theorists who carry on hyping it behaving like “good scientists”? NO

Are String Theorists who take on doctoral students fulfilling their duty to advise well? Tougher: we’re dealing with consenting adults here. But if the advisor waves visions of glittering careers in front of their student, I’d say we have a case of deception.

Does String Theory deserve taxpayers’ and institutional support? NO. No more grants. But give them a severance package or a sabbatical to find some more dignified profession or fruitful field of study.

Should some physicists work on it in their spare time? YES. Should it be taught in schools and at undergraduate level as the dominant theory of fundamental particles? NO.

Should academic publishers be wary of selling books touting String Theory as the Only Game In Town For A Final Theory? YES. Academic publishers have a minimal duty to filter for cranks and hype.

Should commercial publishers be wary of selling books touting String Theory as the Only Game In Town For A Final Theory? NO. Commercial printers are not intellectual gatekeepers and do not have the resources to be. Let ‘em print what they think will sell.

May 2015 Review

You are reading the words of a man with braces on his upper teeth. Small, enamel-coloured bits of plastic stuck to the tooth to locate a piece of wire that is pulling my front teeth back and together. Later I will get braces on my lower teeth, which is what I and the orthodontist really want to do, as my lower back teeth look like a wall that’s falling in. I am not going to describe what it’s like having sharp bits of plastic and metal in my mouth. But it’s something that has to be done. Already the gaps between my front upper teeth have closed up so that I don’t get food stuck there. Now I get food stuck in the braces. I have to brush my teeth every time I eat or my mouth feels like there’s a three-course dinner stuck there.

And I had my first session of personal training. I’m going for increased flexibility and giving weights a rest. This means all sorts of odd exercises using the vipr and those weighted balls with grips. My actual flexibility is almost zero. This means I don’t wake up so ache-y from the previous evening’s sessions.

There was a power outage one night, which means my Roberts CD/Radio lost all its settings and I woke up at 06:25. By rushing a bit and not cooking breakfast, I made it to the 07:15 and into the office about ten minutes late. I felt much better than if I had woken up at 05:30. I’m now going to try 06:00 and a light breakfast as my new wake-up time.

I’ve been coding in Python, using IDLE. There are a couple of file-handling utilities I wanted, one of which is to copy imported photographs to the relevant month-year directory of the photo archive. I’m going to write about using and writing Python later. Home coding is relaxing, time-passing and I never feel like I’ve wasted time.

I visited my friend over in Utrecht over my birthday weekend. Hence the Zandvoort photographs. The Monday after I left, he and his partner went to Patmos. They were going to do that anyway.

I drove my mother down to a hotel in the middle of the New Forest (so called because it’s mostly moorland) one Sunday so she wouldn’t have to sit on replacement rail service buses for hours on end. On the way down I got confused by the junctions outside Portsmouth and we did a quick detour back to some junction, turned round and took another shot. On the way back, there were no complicated junctions at all. Whizz. Straight through.

Sis and I had supper in Polpo at Notting Hill. Pleasant and good food. Being wonderful, she brought me the catalogues from the Christie’s February Contemporary sales, which they get where she works. If you’re not checking her site (On The Fly on the blogroll) you’re missing some good photography.

Not a single movie. Lie to Me S3 on DVD.

I fell asleep on the train. A lot. It’s the pollen. I still managed to read a bit more of Music In The Castle of Heaven, all of Michael Harris’ Mathematics Without Apologies, Why Men Love Bitches by a (delusional) Sherry Argov, and not much more. If you don’t count a lot of stuff on Tkinter objects, of course. Also volume 3 of Fables and volume 1 of Sex Criminals.

I finished the month with a cold, so I spent the entire weekend coding, re-stocking the sites on my Feedly, looking over new music sites, and browsing lots of math stuff. Because I decided to start polishing the Riemann-Roch essay for completion.

More Zandvoort

 

Like I said: I like beaches. And I didn't have two deserts: the pannacotta looked delicious and I'm sure you will love it, but it has ameretto in the sponge, so it's a no-no for me. Hence the apple pie. I'm surprised at how understanding cafes are when I ask them if it has alcohol and then say I can't have it. I should and usually do ask, but sometimes there are fringe cases, of which pannacotta is one.

These were touched up and levelled out using Pictures for the first time. Haven't quite got the workflow down pat, but it's getting there. I have cheated in two and removed a flagpole. And I tried the panorama function on my Lumix DMC-TZ 40 for the first time (I'm a Late Adopter).

Dumbing-Down GCSE Maths - Again?

The Guardian had another "tough maths question" on Friday, to accompany an article about how the GCSE exam boards were being asked to dumb-down make the exam accessible to pupils of all abilities. We’ll pass that one over, because the fact the request was leaked means that even the exam boards think it’s ridiculous.

So here’s the question:

And here’s the answer:

Angle TAP is a right angle, because PTN is an equilateral triangle (all sides equal) and it’s half-way along, so bisects the angle at P and must do so perpendicularly. OP can be calculated from Pythagorus (sqrt(90^2 – 40^2) = 80.62. AT is 20cm long and is the hypotenuse of a right triangle ATP, so AP = sqrt(40^2 – 20^2) = 30.64. We know OP and AP and tan(OAP) = OP/AP = 2.327 and angle OAP = arctan(2.327) = 1.165 radians = 66.75 degrees.

The question is two applications of Pythagorus’ theorem, one of SOHCAHTOA and one of the properties of equilateral triangles. The question points towards the solution by a) asking you to calculate angle TAP and then calculating AP. In the context of GCSE maths, you can only calculate AP if angle TAP is a right-angle. They don’t do the general version of Pythagorus. That’s a clue right there.

What makes it difficult is that the prompts in the question only take you half-way there. To get angle OAP, you need its sin, cos or tan, and you can’t read those off from the question. Because OA is not as long as ON. (Following the hint that TON is an isosceles triangle will take you up the garden path.) We know AP so we need OA or OP. OPT is a right triangle with two known lengths (PT and OT), so we calculate OP. This gives us the Opposite and the Adjacent of angle OAP, and that’s its tangent. Now find the arctan on your calculator.

It’s the need for sustained reasoning, for spotting the false starts, and for solving the problem of the missing bit of information, that makes this a difficult question. It’s not the maths that’s hard - this is Year 8 at most - but the ability to perform sustained reasoning and problem-solving.

Most people can’t do that, anymore than most people can run five-minute miles or deadlift 200+ lbs. So there’s two things here: the first is to sort out the young people who show some aptitude for it, so they can pointed to subjects where it is needed; the second is how to design a syllabus and examination that gives the rest of the world something useful. Even if you can’t deadlift 200lbs (I can’t) you can still be taught useful exercises. Even if you can’t conduct a chain of reasoning, you can still be taught to do basic numeracy, estimation, ratios and comparisons.

My memory is that, one year after doing O-level maths, and so half-way through an OND in engineering, I and everybody else on the course looked at an O-level paper and realised it was trivial compared to what we had learned since. How had we ever thought it was hard? That was when the O-level included calculus, and most of us knew about “imaginary numbers” and had done ever since learning the formula for solving a quadratic equation. Back then the maths teachers used to say they thought that including complex arithmetic in the O-level was only a couple of years away. Well, we’re regressed a lot since then.

ZOUT - Zandvoort

Spent the weekend over in the Netherlands, and have been Python-ing again. This was where I went after arriving at Schipol. When I arrived the sky was overcast, but I'm a believer, and within an hour it looked like this.

I like beaches. If only the good ones weren't so darn far away.

61

Is a house-number, not an age. It's a piece of arithmetic based on my date of birth and today's date. I never felt as old as I did when I was over-weight and in a dead-bedroom relationship in my mid-fifties. Then I joined my gym, and after my second boxing class recognised that I could either get my ass kicked, or kick ass. Getting old means you stop kicking ass. Growing older means that kicking ass takes more effort and has longer recovery times.

I don't expect to behave like a thirty-something. I don't have the hormones, I've sorted out the neuroses. I stay in more and do random stuff less. I used to walk in parks on weekend afternoons, but if I do that now, I almost pass out from the histamines from the pollen I get more sensitive to each year. I can go walking in winter, and then it's too cold. I read for intellectual challenge or entertainment: I've done my English Lit duty reading. I've seen Battleship Potemkin and Man With A Movie Camera, so I have no qualms watching Nikita just because Maggie Q. I leave Friday and Saturday nights to the kids, and Saturdays to the parents. I get older, I adjust. That's what smart people do. And me, even if I'm a little slow on the uptake.


If you're an able-bodied man, it is never too late to re-build your body and mind. I've done it twice: in my early-30's and late 50's. I couldn't do reasonable deadlifts (for an office worker) until six months ago. If you've had an education you can always pick up the books again. That's why I can give you a very simple explanation of why the spectrum of a cylinder has trivial higher co-homology, even though the cylinder itself has a non-trivial first group in the usual topology. I know. I wouldn't have understood a word of that ten years ago either.

In a couple of weeks I begin a year or more's worth of orthodonty. And I will after a bit more hesitation get some personal training sessions to change up the work I do in the gym. The trick is not minding that I have to re-build myself. And not minding that my social life is limited to a few good friends, and that my best sexual days are behind me. That's going to happen to you, and you can work with it or let it get you down.

62? Bring it on.

Why Evolution is an Easy Target for Fundamentalists

I read Wolpoff and Caspari’s Race and Evolution recently. It’s an biographical account of the various views about race in evolutionary theory. The overwhelming impression it left was that all those palaeontologists were and still are, making very large generalisations on the bases of very small amounts of highly interpreted evidence. That's a “feature" of the history-of-the-universe-and-mankind theories: just think of the recent BICEP2 hype-to-epic-fail incident.

To invent theories about the development of the human race on the basis of what are, let’s be blunt, a few scattered bits of bone that require years of training to “see” properly, is speculative science of the highest order. Wolpoff and Caspari acknowledge that the origin-of-humans theories that get the publicity are the ones that fit best with the dominant public political and moral views of the time. Hence the popularity of Out-of-Africa theories. Should anyone prove that Black Africans and White Europeans have significant genetic differences (whatever that might mean) they will be told to shut up or find another job. Should a lady biologist prove that the current human race consists of the males of one previous species and the females of another, the massed ranks of lady columnists would be asking why it took science so long to prove what everyone has always known. (It would be impossible for a male biologist to publish such a paper.)

Evolution is a process without a mechanism. I’m quite happy to accept that our present flora and fauna are the result of breeding and some as-yet-to-be-understood feedback mechanism between environment, phenotype and genotype. What is missing is an adequate explanation of the engineering of the DNA molecule.

The usual story of evolution is that it happens very gradually, taking thousands of years to develop even the smallest successful change to the phenotype, like a particularly inept Victorian experimental inventor. But this cannot be right. Complicated things, like knee joints and legs, have to be done entire, at once, or not at all. How does a animal exist with half a knee? Or a ball head for the lower leg but no socket (yet) on the upper leg? Or consider the development of vision. The first species able to see clearly would have such a competitive advantage over the others that it would simply wipe all the others out. It must have developed in all the relevant species at the same time. Or else there must have been a period of many millions years before predator-pray systems developed. And if Nature experiments, where are the six-fingered guitarists? Something seems to be keeping Nature’s experiments on most species within a tight pattern. (In case you think six-fingered guitarists are a silly idea, remember that horses and many other “four-legged” animals are actually “single-fingered” animals.)

When we understand the fine-structure dynamics of the DNA molecule, we will see that, just as there is only one way to design a knee, and a few to design an eyeball, there are only a limited number of ways a DNA molecule can be stably structured. (‘Limited’ meaning ‘a lot smaller than the number of possible chess games’. While the words that can be formed by the DNA alphabet are potentially limitless, all but a couple of million those combinations won’t lead to structurally stable molecules. Or something along those lines.)

An adequate theory of evolution would be based on an understanding of changes in DNA arising from a) sexual combination, b) environmental damage, c) the only-slightly-understood constructive feedback between environment, phenotype and genotype. When we understand how DNA works, the theory of evolution will be replaced by DNA technology and the history of climate, land mass movement, meteor strikes, large-scale volcanic eruptions and other such events. And all those Vulgar Evolutionist Just-So Stories trotted out to explain every little weirdness of animal behaviour or appearance? Consigned to the tactful forgetfulness of history.

So when I said that evolution doesn’t have a mechanism, I bet you said “sexual selection” under your breath.

Darwin suggested two methods: combat (lions, deer, wolves), when the male appoints himself after fighting with other males, and the females go along with it; and display (the peacock) where the one or both sexes attract the other with some bling or show-off tricks. Quite how otters and penguins fit into this is a stretch of anyone’s imagination - doesn’t it have something to do with pebbles?

A species that is able to survive significant changes to its environment, and even the odd forest fire or major earthquake, cannot be fine-tuned to its existing environment, must have a large set of variations in its genotype and a reasonably rapid environment - phenotype - genotype feedback system. (Otherwise, like smallpox, it can be eradicated. Common cold viruses have the variation and adaptation of the Devil.) That means one or both of the genders can’t be overly fussy in what they look for. In combat-selecting species, it would seem to make sense that the females are the major source of variation, and that the male lion lacks discrimination; and in display-selecting species, the variation and lack of discrimination needs to be in both genders. If males display, they have to be prepared to mate with dull-looking females, and vice-versa; if both do, or don’t, display, each has to be prepared to settle for whoever happens to handy at the time.

A robust species doesn’t actually go in for a lot of selection. It can’t, because it needs genetic variety to survive change. Females choose because “he made me laugh” or “I like bald men”, and accommodating pop-evolutionists tell them that both those reasons are excellent markers for evolutionary advantage. Yesterday they told some other women that long hair and a serious demeanour were also excellent markers for evolutionary advantage. The individual selects, but one individual’s turn-on is another’s turn-off. So a species-wide genetic change cannot be propagated by sexual selection, nor can a particular gene be de-selected by it, because there’s always going to be enough males and females who find the change unattractive, or take up the cause of genes that the majority wish would go away. Which is why women don’t all look like Behati Prinsloo and men don’t all look like Jake Gyllenhall.

Nope. Sexual selection is a crock. But that, and random mutations, are all the evolutionists have until they get a proper theory of DNA engineering. No wonder Evolution is such an easy target for fundamentalists.