Category Archives: This Week’s Hype

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

This Week’s Hype

Posted on June 22, 2017 by woit

I’m on vacation in Europe, not in any mood to spend more time on this than just to point out that it’s the same usual tedious string theory promotional operation from the same people who have been at this for … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 42 Comments

This Month’s Hype

Posted on May 16, 2017 by woit

It seems that a couple of the authors of the recent Cosmic Controversy letter (discussed here) are going on a campaign to embarrass the 29 physicists who were convinced to sign their letter. Andrei Linde has gone to Lubos Motl’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 49 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on September 15, 2016 by woit

Quanta Magazine has over the past couple years been establishing a well-deserved reputation as the smartest and best science journalism around. At the opposite extreme, over many years of interacting with science journalists, the most embarrassingly incompetent one I’ve run … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 25 Comments

This Week’s Hype

Posted on June 4, 2016 by woit

One possible reaction to the phenomenon of hype in fundamental physics is to not worry much, figuring that it should be a self-limiting process. While there’s a huge appetite in the media and elsewhere for the “exciting new idea”, overhyped … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania, This Week's Hype | 9 Comments