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Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser write in the NYT that two leading researchers, George Ellis and Joseph Silk, recently published a controversial piece called "Scientific Method: Defend the Integrity of Physics" that criticized a newfound willingness among some scientists to explicitly set aside the need for experimental confirmation of today's most ambitious cosmic theories — so long as those theories are "sufficiently elegant and explanatory." Whether or not you agree with them, Ellis and Silk have identified a mounting concern in fundamental physics: Today, our most ambitious science can seem at odds with the empirical methodology that has historically given physics its credibility:
Chief among the 'elegance will suffice' advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the 'only game in town' capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the 'many worlds' version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts. These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any.
Richard Dawid argues that physics, or at least parts of it, are about to enter an era of post-empirical science. "How are we to determine whether a theory is true if it cannot be validated experimentally?" ask Frank and Gleiser. "Are superstrings and the multiverse, painstakingly theorized by hundreds of brilliant scientists, anything more than modern-day epicycles?"
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @01:53AM
And I now know you are science-illiterate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:28AM
He is jmorris! You are like the buzzing of flies to him! Bow before his climate-denying greatness, all you who think the science is settled and won't listen to his great and glorious refutation of the AGW!
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday June 07 2015, @04:05PM
Wat? jmorris refuted GGP's assertation.
Disclaimer: I do disagree with his position on AGW, although I haven't done enough research on the latest “Hay guise! There was no warming pause!” to be able to go along with that. It turns out there is some good reasoning behind adjusting measurements (i.e. whoops, we moved the instrument under a shade tree due to construction in the lab but didn't tell you and just kept sending the numbers), but I do find it a bit odd that there's a preponderance of marine buoys that were calibrated incorrectly. Like I said, I need to do more research into the matter before reaching a conclusion, but I am tempted to trust the experts. If it's false, other experts will chime in. This is how we do science.
That being said, I think the consequences of AGW have been overstated. A sea level rise of a few feet isn't going to wipe out coastal cities. Even if New York flooded, I would think that taxis would just be replaced by gondolas. IANAStructural Engineer, but Waterworld simply isn't happening. Over here in flyover country, I'm about 500 feet above sea level, so I probably won't even notice.
Men come and go, but Earth abides; the only concern is whether this species can get through the great filter [wikipedia.org] or not.