Lubos Motl’s“Reference Frame”
Lubos Motl is a string theorist well known for writing a blog called ‘The Reference Frame’. Lubos was an assistant Prof at Harvard until summer 2007. He currently lives in Pilsen, Czech Rebublic. His blog is a collection of personal insults that are in many cases targeted at PI itself, or PI researchers especially in the QG group. All these insults are still publicly available.
1. Attacks on PI/QG Group
2. Personal attacks on PI researchers
3. General Conspiracy Theories
Sorted by date, beginning with the most recent. This list is not exhaustive, and does not date back earlier than 2007.Left out are too numerous insults of Peter Woit.
1. PI/QG Group
Leonard Susskind, global warming, and groupthink
July 29, 2008
“These are methods of Gestapo informers and you can't be surprised that I view Smolin, Woit, and a few others as symbols of moral deterioration and totalitarian tendencies in the Academia. Having some experience from communism, I couldn't ever work in an environment that allows this disgusting immoral crap to flourish.
You know, every good physicist I have known kind of knew (and knows) that Smolin was a sort of crackpot. But their shared left-wing politics has always been more important for them.
Smolin is the ultimate builder of a "consensus science" who would never tolerate any disagreement with his own opinions that are, when it comes to politics, even more "progressive" than Susskind's. And he writes these things very explicitly in his book, too. I am shocked that so many people haven't understood what he actually wants. In the book, he proposes to create a group of "scientists of good faith" (apparently including himself or even led by himself) who could never be criticized and whose (usually very dumb) theories could never be questioned. This group is subsequently supposed to search for "original" thinkers, i.e. mediocre pseudointellectuals who are exceptionally good in licking the butts (and sometimes not only butts) of the "scientists of good faith" such as Smolin: this ability is referred to as the "social skills" over at Backreaction. (They often like to lick them, to reward Smolin's promotion of their crackpot papers.)
In reality, he also surrounds himself with many people, usually females, who are not up to their job but who mostly say "Yes Mr Smolin". Physicists with IQ above 120 could easily explain him what are the problems with every new glub-glub-glub paper that he writes and what are the correct answers to some questions he can't even formulate well - but he doesn't want to listen to the people who know what they're talking about. He is not interested whether his theories (and others) are actually correct or not. Instead, he wants to enjoy (a completely undeserved) privileged status of a "scientist of good faith". And because of the support from the extremely limited journalists and laymen whom he is able to manipulate single-handedly, he actually does enjoy the status even though he has never contributed anything valuable to science.
This is not how real science can work or should work even though some disciplines that have become pseudoscientific obviously do operate in this way. I hope that the bulk of theoretical high-energy physics won't join them.”
Monckton, APS, and Medusa
July 21 2008
“The APS could also adopt the official position of the PI and announce that "the members of our society are certain the world follows the laws of ekpyrotic loop quantum cosmology with a variable speed of light, two metric tensors, and 30+ braided octopi swimming in the spin foam." :-)”
Friday, May 9th 2008
PI goes ekpyrotic
(Comes with a picture of a monkey)
“The Perimeter Institute informed us that the new director would be
"an internationally respected scientist of the highest order."
[B]ecause of the description above, I would have frankly made a bet that it couldn't be e.g. Neil Turok.
I was wrong. Quite obviously, different people have different ideas what it means to be an internationally respected scientist of the highest order […]Neil T
Turok is a good example of a scholar who is helping the journalists to promote Hollywood physics and various bizarre yet popular myths, […]
[T]he Hollywoodization of physics continues. As soon as the remaining heretics will be removed, the PI's cutting-edge picture of the Universe will be based on ekpyrotic loop quantum cosmology with a variable speed of light and 30+ octopi swimming in the spin foam. ;-)”
Monday March 03 2008
Singularities and stringy geometry
“I think it is an absolutely paramount requirement for science to eliminate answers that can be shown to be wrong and, at the sociological level, to eliminate the people who have shown that they are only able to produce wrong answers. It is extremely bad for science if the journalists, media, and other non-scientific channels are helping to flood science with politically convenient loop quantum gravities, spin foams, dynamical triangulations, their proponents, and gigatons of similar garbage in order to dilute the concentration of valuable physics and valuable physicists (and the resources available to this group) to arbitrarily low values.
The point where the concentration of serious physics in the ocean of nonsense converges to zero is another example of a singularity and I hope that this one will also get resolved soon - by imposing a cutoff that won't be breached too easily.”
Jan 2nd 2008
Susskind in Wonderland
“Leonard Susskind attends an alternative talk about quantum gravity at the Perimeter Institute (12/06/2007).
Bianca Dittrich: Introduction to quantum gravity
Dittrich spends an equal time with causal dynamical triangulations as she does with loop quantum gravity and spinfoams. The latter approach is studied by 50 times higher number of papers than the former approach but this discrepancy is a purely sociological artifact. The actual scientific value of both approaches is equal, namely zero.
[…]
Her talk is a typical example of cargo cult science. They use words that sound scientific, they talk about experiments and about their excitement. Formally, everything looks like science. […]”
“But if an institute has a lot of money, it can employ a top physicist to listen to dense pseudoscientists. Note that I have politely used the word "employ" and not "corrupt". For progress in physics, it would surely be a better idea to employ all these Perimeter Institute "quantum gravity" people as additional secretaries of Susskind - or cooks in the restaurants where Susskind may spend his holidays - but unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world.”
Sep 3rd 2007
Physics World: a testing time for strings
“For example, a month ago or so, I was offered a job at the Perimeter Institute. Now, I view a private institute such as the PI to be the optimum arrangement of scientific research. But after some analyses who is there at the PI and how they think about science, the answer was, of course, No, thanks, your institute is literally overrun by cranks.”
(Upon inquiry I was assured by various people Lubos was never offered a job at PI.)
May 29th 2007
Myths about Einstein
“Lee Smolin, the same man who often talks about original scientists, reveals that he actually likes something completely different, namely if young people are writing even more confused parodies of his and other narrow-minded and physically naive papers that should be viewed as important because they resemble the flavor of some basic misunderstandings of a genius that were written when he was already unspectacular. That's one of the reasons why he surrounds himself with loads of untalented people who only say Yes Mr Smolin. He also likes when people's opinions about the society are judged according to a universal, politically correct criterion.”
March 18th 2007
"Einstein may have started the rot"
“Smolin is a mediocre, slow thinker with a bad memory, below-average imagination, bad ability to focus and investigate details, and with kindergarten ideas - it is always hard to tell whether he is just joking when he talks about his childish ideas or whether he is serious - who is unable to learn the state-of-the-art physics at the technical level and who has never written a paper that would remain both valid as well as important among physicists who know their field for more than 10 minutes - you can check it yourself - and Highfield's description is simply another misinformation.
You may imagine whether Lee Smolin's disciples are more or less original and capable than himself.
The whole hype around Smolin's work is artificially created by himself, by the media, and by other crackpots. Smolin's work is much less correct and much less important than the work of a typical - even young - particle physicist or string theorist and the positive words about it are mostly created by politically organized ignorants. Whoever buys that Smolin is a good physicist is being had.” (mad?)
2. PI Researchers (in the broader sense)
Insults: Bianca Dittrich (see above), Sabine Hossenfelder, Joao Magueijo, Fotini Markopoulou, John Moffat, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Lee Smolin,and “all participants of the Loops 2007 except for Moshe Rozali”. Attacks not quoted here, because they are comparably lame include Thomas Thiemann, Sundance Bilson-Thomson, and Carlo Rovelli.
Cargo cult science: sociology of science
July 15, 2008
“Let me give you a superficially innocent example of the dramatic incompatibility of the scientific underclass and the conventional scientific process.
Sabine Hossenfelder wrote another activist text promoting the idea that science - the very selection of correct and promising ideas and research programs - should be controlled by social criteria and by the bureaucrats.
[…]
After years of heavy interactions with people as stupid, as aggressive, and as arrogant as yourself, i.e. with the underclass, have you completely lost your mind, Ms Hossenfelder? I don't know how to explain you these matters comprehensibly enough but let me try again: relatively to real top physicists, you are just a tiny piece of a waste product of metabolism who got into the system mainly because of quotas on the female reproductive organs. Whether you would like a certain kind of change is completely irrelevant.
Sabine Hossenfelder's musings are the ultimate incarnation of this cargo cult science that doesn't work because its predictions are never being tested by the scientific method. She wants to put mobs and sociologists (including the amateur ones, such as herself - she reveals that she has even applied for a grant to be paid for pretty much the same junk she is writing on her blog: fortunately, the application was rejected) not only above the high school teachers but above the scientists themselves!
No, it won't work. The selection in science works and has to work very differently from the way envisioned by Lee Smolin and the scientific lumpenproletariat.”
Tegmark: The world is made of mathematics
Thursday, June 19, 2008,
“Sabine's opinions represent a large portion of what I hate about the pompous fools and self-centered pseudointellectuals.
[…]
So if you are proposing to hire people regardless of the value of their work, and it seems that it is exactly what these people are doing all the time, then you are definitely not building a scientific community. You are building a pompous quasi-religious community of arrogant and stupid crackpots of the Lee Smolin type whose babbling is incoherent and who don't understand basics of "their field" but who like to dress up as intellectuals and to emit populist clichés that sound good to the complete ignorants among the laymen.”
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Fun with John Moffat
“[…]an old Gentleman who used to paint landscapes.
However, he couldn't earn money so he sent mail messages to Einstein, presenting himself as a disciple. Finally, John Moffat ended up as a researcher at the Perimeter Institute. ;-)
He has co-invented many things such as the Variable Speed of Light and similar nonsense. He has also copied Einstein's silly papers about non-symmetric metric tensors, presenting them as his own.[…]
If you need to sell a manifestly wrong idea, call it "an experimental signature". It surely makes a difference, doesn't it? It is so impressive and testable and falsifiable! :-) However, you should be warned that this marketing strategy will only work for those who don't have a slightest clue about particle physics, for example for the readers of Lee Smolin's books and the pornographic excrements from Peter Whore's blog.
Particle physicists might conclude that you are getting senile. Moreover, they would be almost right but not quite because you have probably been senile for many decades. :-) “
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Hep-th papers on Thursday
“Finally, let me end up with a sociological observation that I find absolutely stunning. Among the 14 pretty interesting hep-th papers above, there is only one (1) that includes authors affiliated with the U.S. institutions (van Baalen et al.). We are talking about a discipline that has been literally led by the U.S. for decades. I think that one of the key explanations is the lethal impact of Mr Woit, Mr Smolin, and similar breathtakingly dishonest far-left anti-scientific subhuman activist garbage. The American physics was just incapable to destroy these disgraceful, cheap jerks and liars, so these jerks are now free to destroy the American physics. This is where appeasement with scum may lead. An example where a death penalty is too little, too late.”
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Conspiracy theories about magnets
“Peter Woit, Lee Smolin, and zillions of retarded but vocal laymen […]”
March 19, 2008
Iraqi scientists: is the Earth flat?
“I really think that this discussion is way too similar to the discussions that physicists sometimes have with the likes of Peter Woit or Lee Smolin who are always ready to use technically silly arguments because the actual justification for their wrong statements are sociological cliches not unsimilar to the Iraqi astronomer's Islamic belief: the only reason why they can be heard is that millions of uneducated people are ready to buy and approve their irrational stupidities.”
March 11, 2008
Myths about the Planck scale distortions
“[...]Sabine is apparently convinced that an angel guarantees that she can't be wrong and refuses to understand very clear, indisputable, and sometimes really transparent statements and arguments, indicating that she thinks that she is "teaching" Moshe new things. ;-(
Discovering new physics by misprints
Sabine believes in all kinds of unmotivated and almost certainly impossible distortions associated with the Planck scale. And she is not the only one, for that matter: there are many people similar to Giovanni Amelino-Camelia or Jack Ng.
[.....]
I am afraid that this cognitive step - and, more generally, rigor - is just way too difficult for certain people. [...] Do you want to help them in their research? What Louise or Sabine want you to tell them is how they should modify the shape of the wooden earphones.
[...]
It is unfortunately much harder to explain them that they are doing something really stupid with the very method how they use their brains. It is much harder to liberate them from their extremely naive and narrow mental boxes. It is much harder to explain them that they could be perhaps making variations of the same elementary mistake all the time. It is hard to convince them that if they tried a little bit harder and restricted their excessive arrogance and unjustifiable self-confidence, they could perhaps learn some new things and fix their old misunderstandings.”
March 7th 2008
Trans-Planckian gravity: Bambi-Freese paradox
“In the literature, most of the talk about the "minimum length" in quantum gravity is a vague sloppy babbling of incompetent people who don't have enough imagination to ever understand how Nature actually solves these things - think about profoundly and permanently confused authors such as Ng, Amelino-Camelia, Hossenfelder, and dozens of others.”
March 3rd 2008
Singularities and stringy geometry
“The people who will argue that everything goes and a universal answer such as the "discrete spectrum of geometric quantities" is perhaps good enough to explain everything about quantum gravity - but who will actually tell you nothing about the spectrum of allowed values of the relevant quantities etc. - are just religious bigots who are not interested in the actual scientific answers to tough questions but who prefer to repeat clearly wrong and naive, non-quantitative dogmas for long enough time so that some intellectually challenged listeners will start to take them seriously. Lee Smolin is indisputably a textbook example of these manipulative pseudoscientists.”
Feb 27th 2008
Stephen Hawking and Ed Witten try to compete with new Einsteins...
“This is the work not only of hostile imbeciles such as Peter Woit but also of wise but phlegmatic cowards in high-energy physics who always prefer to stay silent instead of patiently yet unambiguously explain e.g. why Lee Smolin is a textbook example of a limited, ignorant, cheesy crackpot.”