A correction has been added to this article regarding the advertising of Eric Weinstein鈥檚 talk 鈥� please see below for details.
Exciting news: all the problems plaguing physics have been solved. Dark matter, dark energy, quantum gravity 鈥� one amazing insight has delivered us from decades of struggle to a new knowledge nirvana.
There鈥檚 a catch, however: I鈥檓 unable to tell you what that insight is. Neither I, nor any of my professional physicist friends, have the faintest clue. In fact, nobody except Eric Weinstein and mathematician Marcus du Sautoy are sufficiently familiar with the claims to venture an opinion.
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Until yesterday Weinstein was largely unknown to us. He has a PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard University, but left academia years ago and now makes his living as an economist and consultant at a New York hedge fund.
That is not to say he doesn鈥檛 have anything to contribute, but he will have to go through the proper channels. Physicists are inherently conservative. New claims, especially bold ones, face stiff resistance. That鈥檚 for a good reason: faster-than-light neutrinos, anyone?
Don鈥檛 tell the physicists
Yesterday Weinstein, encouraged by du Sautoy, went public with a loud splash and in a in the main physics lecture theatre here at the University of Oxford. 鈥淚鈥檓 trying to promote, perhaps, a new way of doing science. Let鈥檚 start with really big ideas, let鈥檚 be brave and let鈥檚 have a discussion,鈥� du Sautoy told The Guardian.
Sounds fair enough, until you discover that no one thought to invite any of Oxford鈥檚, er, physicists (see correction below).
While Weinstein was delivering his lecture, the theoretical physicists were in a different room listening to a different speaker discuss a different topic (a new source of CP violation in charm physics and its implication for the unitarity triangle, if you鈥檙e curious). Only afterwards did anyone spot news of the revelatory talk that had taken place next door.
Hosting a lecture in a university physics department without inviting any physicists is, at best, an unforgivable oversight. As my colleague put it, 鈥淚t鈥檚 surprising that the organisers did not invite the particle physicists to attend 鈥� if indeed the intention was to have a discussion.鈥�
A discussion? Even if we鈥檇 been invited, that would have been hard without prior disclosure of the nitty-gritty mathematical details. Grand claims like Weinstein鈥檚 would 鈥� in the normal course of science 鈥� be accompanied by a technical paper explaining their foundations. We could then take a deep breath and puzzle over whether they鈥檙e consistent with the vast knowledge of nature arising from centuries of experiment and observation.
At what point during this long and difficult process does it become legitimate to proclaim a breakthrough? It鈥檚 a line in shifting sands, but that line has certainly been crossed. Du Sautoy 鈥� the University of Oxford鈥檚 professor of the public understanding of science, no less 鈥� has short-circuited science鈥檚 basic checks and balances. Yesterday鈥檚 shenanigans were anything but scientific.
Read Marcus du Sautoy鈥檚 letter in response to this article: 鈥�Geometric unity鈥�
