Author Archives: woit

The View From My Office

Posted on March 8, 2025 by woit

The Trump administration has announced a cutoff of $400 million in funding to Columbia University, supposedly because of its failure to take action against anti-semitism on the campus. Two months ago one would have assumed that the idea that the … Continue reading →

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A Tale of Two Cities

Posted on March 5, 2025 by woit

The prospect of massive cuts in US federal government science funding has caused an increase in the usual heated internet debates over science funding. These typically involve people arguing either: “Funding for science research is an unalloyed good that leads … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 28 Comments

ICM 2026

Posted on February 25, 2025 by woit

Back in 2022 at the time of the rescheduled 2022 ICM I wrote here: One decision already made there was that the 2026 ICM will be hosted by the US in Philadelphia. With the 2022 experience in mind, hopefully the … Continue reading →

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Several Items

Posted on February 10, 2025 by woit

A few items of various kinds: A little while ago I did another podcast, this time with Hrvoje Kukina. The result is now available here. There’s a new French documentary out, available here, about the story of the campaign by … Continue reading →

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Competition and Survival in Modern Academia

Posted on February 5, 2025 by woit

Jesper Grimstrup and Jarl Sidelmann have an interesting new paper up on the arXiv, entitled Competition and survival in modern academia: A bibliometric case study of theoretical high-energy physics. It uses bibliometric data to study career paths in hep-th, especially … Continue reading →

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Nature Research Intelligence

Posted on January 25, 2025 by woit

I just noticed something new showing up in Google searches, summaries of the state of scientific research areas such as this one about String Theory And Quantum Gravity. They’re produced by Nature Research Intelligence, which has been around for a … Continue reading →

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Strings 2025

Posted on January 10, 2025 by woit

Enjoying a vacation on a Caribbean porch, and just had a couple hours to kill with good internet access. For some reason I spent part of them listening to the summary panel discussions at Strings 2025, which just ended today. … Continue reading →

Posted in Strings 2XXX | 27 Comments

A Milestone

Posted on January 2, 2025 by woit

I recently realized that this would be the 2000th posting on this blog and was hoping to have something interesting to post for the occasion. Things though have been very quiet and I’m about to go off on vacation, so … Continue reading →

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String Theory Debate

Posted on December 28, 2024 by woit

Recently Curt Jaimungal offered to host a debate over string theory between me and a willing string theorist. Joe Conlon took him up on the offer and our discussion is now available. I think it turned out quite well, and … Continue reading →

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This Week’s Hype, etc.

Posted on December 17, 2024 by woit

NYU today put out a press release claiming that Physicists ‘Bootstrap’ Validity of String Theory, telling us that NYU and Caltech scientists develop innovative mathematical approach to back existence of long-held framework explaining all physical reality. and String theory, conceptualized … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 40 Comments