Category Archives: This Week’s Hype

This Week’s Hype

Posted on December 19, 2018 by woit

A few months ago string theorists at Stanford had their university press office put out hype-filled promotional material about their research field, this was discussed here. One odd thing about this was that normally such PR efforts are made in … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 3 Comments

Last Night’s Hype

Posted on October 18, 2018 by woit

If you’re a Friend of the IAS ($1750/year and up), you were invited to a talk last night, at which IAS member Thomas Rudelius promised to explain to you How to Test String Theory. The video of the talk is … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, This Week's Hype | 3 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on October 15, 2018 by woit

The story of string theory as a theory of everything has settled into a rather bizarre steady-state, with these three recent links providing a look at where we are now: At his podcast site, Sean Carroll has an interview with … Continue reading →

Posted in Swampland, This Week's Hype | 14 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on September 10, 2018 by woit

The Stanford string theory group is not taking the attack by Harvard’s Cumrun Vafa lying down. After an arXiv barrage of papers defending KKLT (see here), they’ve now enlisted the Stanford press office, which has produced a five part promotional … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 19 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on March 20, 2018 by woit

Many thanks to Sabine Hossenfelder for her efforts to debunk the attempt to use Hawking’s death as a platform for multiverse hype. See her posting at Backreaction for a good explanation of what is going on here. To summarize the … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 7 Comments

This Week’s Hype: The Best Explanation for Everything in the Universe

Posted on December 22, 2017 by woit

Today The Atlantic has, via Quanta Magazine, some unadulterated, pure, grade A hype for the holidays: String Theory: The Best Explanation for Everything in the Universe. In a time when the credibility of science is under attack, does anyone else … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 40 Comments

This Week’s Hype/Fake Physics

Posted on December 11, 2017 by woit

On the Fake Physics front, Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution is True has a post claiming New evidence for the multiverse-and its implications. You would think that recent history should have made clear the danger of using Youtube videos as … Continue reading →

Posted in Fake Physics, This Week's Hype | 15 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on October 26, 2017 by woit

Yet another entry in the long line of nonsensical hype about fundamental physics driven by misleading university press releases is today’s news that CERN Scientists Conclude that the Universe Should Not Exist. Tracking this back through various press stories (see … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 24 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on July 19, 2017 by woit

Commenter CIP pointed out that today’s New York Times has one of the worst examples of string theory hype I’ve seen in a while. Based on this observation of an expected QFT anomaly effect in a condensed matter system, the … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 54 Comments

Last Week’s Hype

Posted on July 6, 2017 by woit

Now back from vacation, more regular blogging should resume imminently. While away, lots of press stories about claims that LIGO could be used to get “evidence for string theory”. As usual, these things can be traced back to misleading statements … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 9 Comments