{"id":7279,"date":"2014-11-03T19:15:26","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T00:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=7279"},"modified":"2014-11-03T19:17:11","modified_gmt":"2014-11-04T00:17:11","slug":"last-weeks-hype-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=7279","title":{"rendered":"Last Week&#8217;s Hype"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When looking at the nonsense spread around the media by this week&#8217;s university press-release-driven hype about string field theory &#8220;explaining quantum mechanics&#8221;, I realized that maybe I shouldn&#8217;t have ignored last week&#8217;s university press-release-driven hype, which was about the multiverse &#8220;explaining quantum mechanics&#8221;.  For that one the press release is <a href=\"http:\/\/app.griffith.edu.au\/news\/2014\/10\/27\/new-quantum-theory-is-out-of-this-parallel-world\/\">New quantum theory is out of this parallel world<\/a> and the paper is <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1402.6144\">here<\/a>.  It has generated all sorts of press stories, with a typical example <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.co.uk\/2014\/10\/31\/parallel-universes-exist_n_6080934.html\">Parallel Universes Exist &#8211; And Could Explain All Physics, Says Griffith University Study<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sharing the credit or blame for this with the Griffith University press office is the APS and its Physical Review X, which published the paper <a href=\"http:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prx\/abstract\/10.1103\/PhysRevX.4.041013\">here<\/a>. The APS Editor in Chief explains <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prx\/edannounce\/10.1103\/PhysRevX.4.040001\">here<\/a> that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In recent years, however, we have seen a strong need of some researchers to have their best scientific contributions published in highly selective and small journals that can disseminate those contributions broadly and offer them high visibility.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The idea seems to be that if you want &#8220;high visibility&#8221;, and you&#8217;ve got $1700 to pay for it, Physical Review X is there to get you into the media.  They seem to have realized though that maybe the &#8220;parallel worlds explain quantum mechanics&#8221; might be seen as going too far, so have put out an <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prx\/edannounce\/10.1103\/PhysRevX.4.040002\">editorial justifying its publication<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When looking at the nonsense spread around the media by this week&#8217;s university press-release-driven hype about string field theory &#8220;explaining quantum mechanics&#8221;, I realized that maybe I shouldn&#8217;t have ignored last week&#8217;s university press-release-driven hype, which was about the multiverse &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=7279\">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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7279","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\/7279","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=7279"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7281,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7279\/revisions\/7281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}