{"id":15691,"date":"2026-05-15T01:05:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T05:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=15691"},"modified":"2026-05-15T01:05:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T05:05:37","slug":"this-weeks-hype-78","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=15691","title":{"rendered":"This Week&#8217;s Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The usual string theory hype machine in action: to celebrate <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/accepted\/10.1103\/cw4p-cqh7\">a PRL publication<\/a>, a university press office puts out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.caltech.edu\/about\/news\/string-theory-emerges-from-almost-nothing\">a press release full of hype with a highly misleading title<\/a> (&#8220;string theory is uniquely derived from basic assumptions about the universe&#8221;), it&#8217;s then picked up and distributed at <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2026-05-theory-uniquely-derived-basic-assumptions.html\">sites like this<\/a>, soon to make its way into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/string-theory-assumptions-bootstrap\">news stories like this<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been writing for over twenty years about the endless examples of this campaign to promote a failed theory, warning about the danger of a significant negative effect on the credibility of scientific research with the general public.  Those chickens have now come home to roost.<\/p>\n<p>For specifics about this particular example of hype, see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=15647\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The usual string theory hype machine in action: to celebrate a PRL publication, a university press office puts out a press release full of hype with a highly misleading title (&#8220;string theory is uniquely derived from basic assumptions about the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=15691\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-hype"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15691"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15694,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15691\/revisions\/15694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}