What's wrong with physics? | Sabine Hossenfelder

Sabine Hossenfelder lays out her plan to regain physics' reputation.

After 40 years of stagnation, the truth is now undeniable: physics is failing. Acclaimed physicist Sabine Hossenfelder lays out her plan to regain the once great reputation of physics.

#SabineHossenfelder #quantummechanics #scientificmethod

Sabine Hossenfelder is an author and theoretical physicist who researches quantum gravity. She is a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies where she leads the Superfluid Dark Matter group.

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[kellensarien]

The lack of progress in fundamental physics in the last few decades is rivaled only by the noise and tumult physicists create when they have a new idea - a new idea that is just as much of an untestable dead end as all the older new ideas. This is especially noteworthy in the pages of New Scientist, of which I am a subscriber. Every third issue has a cover story on some startling theory that will overturn all that we think we know about fundamental reality. None of these ideas have gone anywhere in the 23 years I have been a subscriber. Physics used to be exploration; then it turned into a profession; now it is a racket.

[sanjivgupta]

One of the reason for a 'newer' theory coming every fortnight is that in many countries salaries, promotions, funding and career opportunities are too dependent on number of publications rather than on quality of work. If this is the trend you can put forth as many unfounded fancy theories as you wish.

[paulmcquown]

I really appreciate Sabine taking these issues and addressing in this public forum. I once was a rocket scientist and in those days paying a lot more attention to the developments going on in physics through the people I had direct professional contact with. Most of those people are dead and the ones that not I have lost track of, regrettably. So Sabine with her series on pretty much everything fills the intellectual vacuum in my life. Thank you so much Sabine, your wonderful!

[Hardzinho_Yay]

lovely and very important talk, I have one thing that I thought would be addressed by Sabine but it didn't. It is the "publish or perish" phylosophy, it leads to a lot of junk science, waste of resources and academic polution. Great minds could be better channeled fueling more important work instead of competing for funding, career opportunities and resources.

[bobmcgrath]

One of the most intriguing and intellectually honest videos I’ve seen for some time.
Bravo ma’am!

[nHans]

As an engineer, I have a different perspective on why physicists tend to choose theories that are 'beautiful, ' 'simple, ' or 'elegant.' We engineers use a lot of empirical, experimentally-derived data in our work. (Science hasn't advanced enough to predict these values from first principles.) We try to fit curves to the data points, because of course it's easier to work with equations.

Now there are literally an infinite number of equations that can fit a finite number of data points. We need just one. So how do we go about choosing it? We don't use 'beauty' as a specific criterion—it's ill-defined and too subjective. However, we do use several other criteria: Simplicity, usability, generality, flexibility, accuracy, range, well-researched, computable etc. Those so inclined could indeed summarize these criteria as 'beauty.'

[anest-uk]

I studied Physics at Cambridge in the 70s (Neil Turok's year). I found it upsetting even back then that physics was following a path described by philospher of science Imre Lakatos as _degenerating_ "a research programme is degenerating if the successive theories do not deliver novel predictions or if the novel predictions that they deliver turn out to be false". It seemed like the interesting problems were largely solved and the cutting edge research was far distant from what had fascinated me at school - electromagnetism, thermodynamics etc. I would have been better studying engineering or perhaps bioscience, but I did not know that then.

[WWeronko]

As an engineer and amateur physicist I am in the camp that physics is in crisis. With the belief that universe is made up of 70% dark energy, 25% dark matter and 5% normal matter and we know something about that 5% normal matter shows a rather lack of understanding of the totality of reality. Moreover, I find String Theory, for example, a theory that can predict very little and probably unprovable to have pretty math as its saving grace is typical of the inadequacies of the state of the science. That fact that many physicists believe in Many Worlds seemingly to save determinism in a non-deterministic universe and help explain free will seems to show a tendency to grasp at the outrageous. Perhaps indeed it is a factor of how we teach physics that is keeping humanity from moving to a unified theory.

[opdawg]

Good to see Scientists questioning the field they specialize in rather than going with the herd and accepting unproven theories.

[mickmccrohon]

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

Richard P. Feynman

[armandogarciajuliana]

Many theoretical physicists are like the guy who goes to the doctor:
- Doctor, my brother thinks he is a chicken.
- Do not worry, take him here and I will fix his mind.
- We can’t do that, we need the eggs.

[LowellBoggs]

Great video, but one thing never discussed is the question of why physicists don't perceive that quantum mechanic's lack of a way to predict the timing of anything seems to be a disaster. Why don't physicists think this is a deal breaker? Time is all over newton's laws, why don't physicists require that all theories predict timing of events?

[jonathonjubb]

I'm an accountant. During my career we were expected to create results. In fact the continuation of our careers depended upon it.
Btw all balance sheets are works of art! Interpret that as you like....

[NondescriptMammal]

What an excellent synopsis of a problem that is seldom discussed openly and honestly. Great respect for Sabine for having the honesty and scientific integrity to highlight this issue in this way, instead of sweeping it under the rug as so many theoretical physicists seem all too willing to do.

[protocol]

There are many problems that can't be solved just by putting more people on it. The computing analogy is that adding more nodes to a compute cluster (or processors in a single computer) lets you solve more problems at once but it doesn't necessarily let you solve more complex or larger problems. It can, in some cases, if you can recast the problem into relatively independent bite size pieces but that's often very hard and unintuitive.

[TheWildWord]

Thank you Sabine I really appreciate how you had the courage to stand up and point things out among your profession that aren't working.
These are the conversations that need to be had if we want progress. I am 100% confident that a breakthrough is right around the corner. And I know that it will be a result of your efforts pushing for whatever this may be. I also know that you will be on the front line with the skills and knowledge that you possess creating something that we humans never thought was possible.

[Nivola]

Thank you Sabine, I’ve never heard this argument before and find it worrying and compelling.
I also tend to agree with many comments below that “careers” and “capitalism” ideal of making more profit i.e. money, can distort the motivation and results of research!
Please tell us and the establishment that distributes the research money, what should be done to progress in physics, because physics really matters!

[AD-zovp]

As much as I agree with your general point, the number of physicists increased especially in application and the amount of stuff they have to learn or can focus on has also increased exponentially. For the whole "leading astray" thing I completely agree though

[RadicalCaveman]

Wow! When she references Leonard Cohen at the beginning and end, she actually SMILES!

[bozo]

Thank you IAI for posting the complete video.