Take a problem (normally a problem important from application side); apply the scientific model developing the necessary number of new concepts and mathematical tools and obtain solution. If resolution is bad, begin again or abandon the problem. If it is good, then obtain “fame” but continue working.

Self-important scientists life:

Choose a problem (a problem important for obtaining notoriety); apply the scientific model and obtain an adequate resolution. If this is not possible, choose one of several possibilities:

- falsify the data forcing the fit with your “marvellous” theory (e.g. Pons cold fusion).
- ignore the failure and begin a new theory named equal for notoriety purposes (e.g. string theory)
- take a good idea by other less recognized man (including coworkers and students) and publicly like if were your (e.g. Rutherford).
- ignore the scientific method and use other methods like religious faith, trivial like antrophic, metaphysical, own ones (developed specifically for the occasion), etc.

If you are critiqued by “stupid” scientists, attack fierily them (this is familiar for us here

Remember that you are right and other are stupid because you are… The Best.

*****************************************

Comparison:

- The first scientific searches true, the other searches notoriety.

- The honest scientist talk using a firm discourse (of course can evolution), the other modifies his discourse (yesterday I said black, today I say white, tomorrow I say black again) when he needs.

- The first helps to colleagues, the other puts obstacles to the progress of others.

- The first is mainly interested in the solving of important society problems (e.g. energy crisis, cancer cure, etc.). The second ignores agony of people and just claim for more funding for studying a “stupid thing” that only helps to him or herself (by obtaining notoriety).

- The first scientist admit that there is interesting disciplines and other scientists. The second think that just his/her field is important. The rest of science is trivial or only “engineering”.

Of course, Weinberg, Witten, Hawking, Greene, Schwartz, etc. belong to the group of self-important physicists.

Note: Of course, initially both Weinberg and Witten did some significant progress in science, but now they are more focused on self-importance than in real progress.

Peter, I remember that you wait that Witten recognizes that all string endeavour is a waste of time. This will succeed on one of two possibilities: there is a new theory where he can be selfimportant once more (highly improbable because Witten is old enough for beginning again from zero even if you develop that theory), there are significant experimental data showing his theory is wrong (also highly improbable because current string theory is not falsifiable).

It’s the landscape I’ve been claiming is inherently unfalsifiable pseudo-science, not split supersymmetry. Sure, I’m willing to believe that split supersymmetry is in principle falsifiable, if you could go to arbitrarily high energies. But the question I can’t get an answer to is whether it is falsiable at the LHC, although people seem to claim it makes predictions for the LHC. Sure, if the gluinos are high enough mass you’re doing supersplit supersymmetry, which we know is a joke. But, to ask the same question I’ve been asking in a different form: if split supersymmetry predicts a gluino below a certain mass, what is that mass? You’re telling me that if you push the mass too high, coupling constant unification won’t work, but you’ve got a lot of free parameters to play with. At what mass does coupling constant unification conclusively fail? And, assuming the LHC runs for a few years at design luminosity, up to what mass will it see these gluinos? Will its reach be high enough to falsify the idea of split supersymmetry? I’m still not getting an answer to this….

I think the landscape pseudo-science is a result of string theorists being unwilling to wave the white flag. By any sensible version of the scientific method, once you realize that the speculative hypothesis you’ve been investigating is, if consistent, unable to predict anything, you’re supposed to abandon it and try something else. I find it just shocking that serious physicists are unwilling to acknowledge this, and would prefer to totally trash the subject and turn it into a pseudo-science.

Why do you think otherwise legitimate physicists, end up indulging in pseudo-scientific activities like the anthropic principle? Do you think it’s the equivalent of them waving a white flag?

If I didn’t know any better, one reason I would think that some physicists would use to justify indulging in pseudo-science, would be that all their personal “pet theories” were a washout and that they’re engaging in desperate measures to salvage their life’s work. Admitting defeat is a hard thing to do for many folks’ egos.

Well, you now seem to agree that Weinberg doesn’t describe his bound as giving a “prediction”. He’s careful to avoid this misuse of terminology, even if many others with an agenda of passing off pseudo-science as science aren’t so careful these days.

Your example of falsifying split SUSY by finding something it doesn’t predict is kind of silly. By the same reasoning I could argue that of course split supersymmetry is falsifiable because it is incompatible with angels with trumpets blaring being produced in a 14 TeV proton-proton collision, so if the LHC sees an angel with a trumpet blaring coming out of the interaction region, then split supersymmetry will be falsified. Clearly this is an abuse of what people generally mean by falsifiability: the theory is supposed to make a definite prediction that something will happpen if you do a certain experiment. The prediction should be definite enough that the theory must be wrong if you do the experiment and don’t see the predicted behavior.

Your example of long-lived gluinos is better. So now, what does split supersymmetry predict for the mass and lifetime of these gluinos? How much integrated luminosity will the experimenters at the LHC have to acquire and analyze so that they can rule out split supersymmetry?

We still completely disagree about the significance of Weinberg’s bound. Again: as far as the CC goes, the statement: “there’s a multiverse out there with a random distribution of CCs” is experimentally indistinguishable from the statement “I don’t have a clue what determines the CC”. You’re doing pseudo-science not science when you start going on about this statement giving scientific predictions. You’re doing dishonest pseudo-science when you start crowing about “Weinberg’s successful prediction” when it’s:

1. Not really a prediction.
2. Off by at least an order of magnitude anyway.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with people investigating the multiverse hypothesis, if they have an idea about how to get a legitimate scientific prediction out of it. All I’ve seen so far coming out of such investigations is pseudo-science, without even a plausible idea about how they’ll ever get a real prediction. I’ve specifically asked people doing this kind of work to tell me what they expect to be able to really predict. For a while the answer was the scale of supersymmetry breaking, but recently they have given up on that, and they don’t have any other answer.

You may not find very worthy my spending my time complaining that the landscape is pseudo-science. I happen to think it’s a lot more worthwhile than trashing the field of theoretical physics by turning it into a pseudo-science, or allowing one’s colleagues to successfully do so without raising any objection.

It’s neither simple nor easy. What if nothing is found? It is always much more difficult to prove something does NOT exist, experimentally, than to prove that something DOES exist.

Actually I would say it is impossible to prove something does NOT exist. For example there has NOT been a conclusive experiment proving that ghost does NOT exist, although no experiment showing it exists either. You can replace the keyword ghost with sghost, ghostino, sghostino, or god, sgod, sgodino. Same thhing can be said.

You could well claim that squarks exist at an energy unreachable by LHC, or claim that the cross section of interaction is too small that the LHC has not run for the many million years needed to detect a single event yet. Or the ultimate fudge factor would be the squarks do not interact with the rest of the world in any of the 4 know forces, since it only interacts using sforces. Certainly no one knows what a squark that only interact with sforces would look like.

All the new English words invented by super string theoretists are making me dizzle already.

Quantoken