Sabine Hossenfelder - anti-science?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’ve watched the Professor Dave video only partly so far, but I broadly agree with the tenor. I mean, yes, academia contains some flaws and issues in desperate need for a fix, but it also contains many hardworking, invested, passionate people putting out great science, sometimes against the grain of bad institutional incentives. Research can be hampered by academic culture (and has been, for instance the prejudice against overly ‘philosophical’ work in physics surrounding foundational issues in quantum mechanics has delayed research quantum information and quantum computation), but that’s no carte blanche to discard everything you don’t like. Unfortunately, she doesn’t really go into the subtleties of the matter, but tends to paint with a broad brush—and from a viewpoint heavily influenced by her own experiences in academia, plus a good heaping of contrarianism, in my estimation.

But to me, there’s another problem, which is that while she often puts out quality content in fields at least adjacent to her expertise, she isn’t shy to confidently expound on topics where she has little more understanding than the average person in the streets, and often doesn’t seem willing to put in the necessary effort to gain a more comprehensive overview. Instead, she offers up very confident pronouncements that are often at least misleading, or incomplete, if not outright wrong. All of this with an air of finally talking sense where everybody else just got themselves into a muddle.

22

Having now watched the video in full, I think it drops the ball at a couple of crucial points, most of which I think are connected to Farina’s lack of understanding of fundamental physics. For one, he counters the point that physicists have proposed many unobserved particles with a set of examples of particles that were observed, but there’s a crucial difference: those predictions, by and large, were made using theories that had already seen considerable explanatory success, such as the prediction of the top quark from the standard model of particle physics, or the prediction of gravitational waves from general relativity.

But the predictions Hossenfelder criticizes originate from speculative extensions of these theories, which often don’t have much, if any, justification other than that they make the math nicer (which I happen to think isn’t so bad a justification, but well). Take supersymmetry: one could conjure up an explanatory need in the existence of dark matter, with the lightest superpartner accounting for that, but as far as I know, versions of supersymmetry that fit with the necessary parameters for dark matter have already been ruled out. But does that mean that one should just throw in the towel? I don’t know: the demarcation problem of when a research problem becomes moribund is simply a genuinely hard one, and different people can reasonably hold different opinions—which neither Farina nor Hossenfelder seems to allow for.

Likewise with the notion that quantum mechanics or relativity were also ‘just math’ at one point. That’s just not true. Quantum mechanics came out of a pressing experimental need to explain phenomena previous theories couldn’t account for, and became a success, against considerable resistance, because of its efficacy in doing so. I don’t think anybody could’ve just conjured up quantum mechanics in vacuo, without this guidance from experiment—indeed, there are historical examples of people considering phenomena of quantum mechanics a priori impossible as a matter of pure logic. It’s just this lack of guidance that Hossenfelder criticizes, or rather, what she views as rampant speculation in the face of such a lack. But what do we do when we’ve probed most of the easily accessible regimes already? Again: difficult question, no easy answers.

Indeed, I’m not sure if the sort of ‘everything’s fine, nothing to see here’-attitude the video projects isn’t in itself as damaging as the Hossenfelderian attitude of ‘scientists just produce nonsense to get grant money’. There clearly are systematic problems with academia, from pressure to publish (and publish the right stuff in the right journals), to rampant job insecurity, to fadism and toxic work environments. It doesn’t help to gloss over these to save the face of science in the eyes of the public; they should rather be addressed, and it should be pointed out that still, while there undoubtedly are serious issues, the vast bulk of scientific output is absolutely trustworthy, and most mistakes are honest ones.

There’s also the case that such a reaction to Hossenfelder’s stance just comes across as academic wagon circling: there’s an opening for the denier-crowd to just say, see, as soon as somebody bravely dares to speak truth to power, down comes the hammer. So I’m not really sure I think the video succeeds at what it’s trying to do.

23

I watched the aforementioned video. Fairly well done, misses slightly here and there.

I am astounded that people are criticizing “Science” as just “All Math now”. This is bad because what?

Starting in the 1920s, people were noticing that the Math didn’t addup in working out Beta decay. Pauli and Fermi proposed various ideas on how to solve this. By 1934 Fermi had, based on Math, worked out the properties of a heretofore unknown particle. In 1938 the electron antineutrino was first detected.

The thing that many people don’t get is that things have matured to the point where the time and effort to verify a claim based on Math has gotten much harder. E.g., the Higgs boson was proposed in 1964 and discovered at CERN in 2012.

If something was easily discoverable, it would have been known by the 1960s. Welcome to the 2000s.

24

I’ve watched it now. If you’ve watched a lot of Professor Dave content, you’ll know that he is concerned with science denying nonsense, and clearly thinks science communication is important. So I can see why he is worried about Hossenfelder - who he admits has the right background and is an excellent science communicator - using the level of trust she’s gained to support nonsense that gives support to science deniers.
Sure academia has its issues. What field doesn’t?
She puts out lots of videos on lots of subjects, which Dave doesn’t think is wrong in any way (since he admits to doing it also.) But even with her background she can’t possibly keep up with the latest advances in so many areas of physics and other things. There aren’t enough hours in the day. Which is no problem unless you convince yourself that anything you write is state of the art and correct because you have lots of subscribers.
Good science communication is simplifying science enough to be accessible to the general public and staying correct. It isn’t saying that qualified scientists are full of crap without taking the time to write up the reasons, submitting it as a paper, and seeing the comments.

25

They may both be simplifications, but I would not place the two simplifications in the same ballpark (or even the same sports league) in terms of how damaging or how far from accurate they are.

26

Not sure I know how to gauge this, but I’ll note that both are damaging to different things—one hurting the acceptance of science within society, the other the quality of the science being done. Each influences the other as a sort of second-order effect: lack of acceptance leads to lack of funding and less quality science, while qualitatively worse science leads to less acceptance of science. But as for how much harm each does, I’d say that depends on how you prioritize these areas.

On another note, Hossenfelder’s reply to the Professor Dave video is up. I find it most worrisome how easily she slides from the crisis she diagnoses in particle physics to a crisis of science at large. Because let’s face it, even good particle physics is not that hugely impactful on a social level, when compared to, say, the development of the COVID vaccine. A bit of leniency there has consequently far fewer consequences, and the sort of one-shot generalization she does is highly questionable.

Also, at one point, she at least comes close to actually making the ‘see them circling the wagons’-response I suggested.

27

Sabine’s response was great. She is a great science communicator and her delivery style and attitude is top notch.

I wish she wouldn’t associate (scientifically) with Eric Weinstein, he gives off some strong crank vibes, but her do-not-give-a-shit attitude is part of what makes her endearing.

“Professor Dave”, whom I had never heard of, kind of annoyed me with pretentiousness.

28

And here we have it. Someone enamored of delivery over substance. When the topic is science fercryinoutloud.

29

Feels like you will fit right in with the “Professor Dave” crowd.

30

As opposed to buying Hossenfelder’s slickly packaged garbage, lies, and innuendo? Yeah, count me in for the other side.

31

I think that is a ridiculous characterization of Hossenfelder, and I completely reject the idea that she is “anti-science”, but you are entitled to your own opinion obviously.

And I like my entertainment to be entertaining. I’m weird like that.

32

For the most part, I agree.

Crank vibes is really underselling it, the Weisteins are very anti-science and about pushing their own agenda. It seems you don’t care for Professor Dave but he did a very thorough explanation of all the ways they’ve pushed anti-establishment and anti-science rhetoric and tried to bully hardworking people in the field https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGcpUxl_9Vg

He can be. The vast majority of his videos are about teaching science, and I don’t just mean science news, I mean educational content. But he’s got into battles with groups like flat earth and has developed a sharp tongue.

That said, he was pretty gracious about Sabine for most of the video.

33

I agree, and I also agree with your longer analysis.
I think Professor Dave is a bit blase about the issues with science and predictive power, and a bit naive about string theory in particular (he talks as though it’s a brand new, untested thing). I’ve been ranting recently about the whole science journal funding and review model; that it is out of date and not fit for purpose, so I agree there are problems.

However, I think though we need to separate out what kind of message is more dangerous in the abstract from how dangerous are they in this specific context. No-one is going to make funding decisions on scientific projects on the basis of what Professor Dave says. The Guardian are not going to use his (lack of) knowledge of particle physics to write an article.
OTOH, a large community does seem to find Sabine’s anti-establishment rhetoric useful, or supportive of their worldview. And Sabine herself writes for the Guardian. So the latter is more problematic.

And I want to emphasize that my criticism here is limited to the videos / articles / books.
I saw Sabine as the sole dissenting voice on a parliamentary discussion on the future collider, and I was cheering her on.

34

Moderating:

Both of you knock it off. Comment on the content, not the commentator.

35

I saw her video on AI decision making and autonomous cars. Totally came across as I’m very highly educated in a field few (including you) can’t understand. Therefore I’m an expert in everything.

36

I take your point. My sense is as follows.

A message that everything is fine suggests that no action is needed, leading to science continuing as it is, which is not perfect but also not directly damaging. The damage would be in the opportunity lost at improving the efficiency of the scientific enterprise, say. It’s also not a message that will have a high virality.

A message that it’s all garbage and an engine for maintaining ivory towers suggests that something should be done, and the message also has a high virality. Someone in a position to act on the message could actively damage sound research endeavors (e.g., by advising against certain research support or shaping public opinion in a way that feeds back to lawmakers).

(I had to step away before finalizing this post and see that @Mijin has said something similar in the meantime.)

At issue is that she makes two types of content. Among her videos, for instance, one video may have well-meaning, informative, and correct educational content with high production values, while another may be off-the-rails nonsense of the sort @LSLGuy references, but also with high production values. A general viewer will not be able to distinguish between the two, by design. I encourage you to read through the relevant portions of the other thread linked in the OP to see in concrete terms what sorts of problems there are.

37

Just watched it, although it was difficult to get through. Her ability to wildly extrapolate a subjective feeling about a minor corner of particle physics into THE SCIENCE WORLD IS FAILING! (or even just particle physics more broadly is failing) is remarkable. I reiterate my point from the other thread that she supports her wild extrapolations using examples that don’t even align with the point at all, but she is willing to use them freely by hiding behind technical jargon knowing that people will hear her emphasis and not be able to judge that the content itself is just wrong.

She argues that methods are old, but then maligns the work being done to go beyond those methods.

She argues that the methods don’t work, but she chooses to never talk about the many contexts in which they have worked and continue to work, as that would not be helpful for her narrative goal. She pre-dismisses this rebuttal by quite literally saying “fuck nuance”, which is another way of saying “I don’t care if my point is correct. I just care to be seen as right.”

Her biology analogy is bonkers. That’s not how particle physics is done, and she ought to know it. Also I am beginning to think she doesn’t actually understand the way science progresses at all and how observations and theoretical issues guide the next steps at any given time.

To amplify this, she says the last fifty years will be the most embarrassing period in the history of science. Really!? In all the history of science!?

She again says that she doesn’t trust scientists and suggests that they’re all in a Fight-Club-esque cabal to get funding dollars through self-reinforced bad science. I take particular umbrage at this point, because I know how I and my many friends and colleagues across multiple scientific fields operate. Her take is comical, conspiratorial nonsense. I’m sorry she had a bad time with whatever beyond-gravity theory she tried as a postdoc. But, come on.

I don’t think she actually understands the motivations for or results from concrete searches for new physics, for instance dark matter. She again in this video does plenty of “dismissal via style”, e.g. suggesting that WIMPs are an obviously nonsense idea because the word “miracle” was poetically attached to one aspect of the idea historically, scientific merits be damned. I reiterate my “hiker lost their keys” analogy from the previous thread.

These notes I wrote after maybe the first half of the video. I then stopped and just gritted my teeth to get through the rest, which was more of the same.

To be clear, there are many aspects of academia and science that need improvement, and it would be valuable to have wider discussions of those issues. But she isn’t talking about any of that. She’s just tiling at windmills.

38

The were two criticisms in the video the OP linked:

  1. Hossenfelder is anti-establishment (not the same as being anti-science)
  2. Some randos may use her anti-establishment stance to push some pseudo-sciencific garbage.

Regarding 1) she clearly has an axe to grind against academia. It’s probably fair to say she is painting with too wide a brush. I don’t find it surprising that many in academia would take exception to that, since she is directly criticizing the whole field and indirectly their own work. The “lack of nuance” discussion isn’t very interesting to me personally.

Point 2) is more relevant to me and the concern is way overblown and the criticism unfair. Her content is good and she has some interesting and original takes on a lot of subjects. Hossenfelder doesn’t own “Professor Dave” or really the establishment any apologies for how someone else could misuse her content and/or opinions.

39

I disagree, and I think you may have missed something.

Part of professor Dave’s point was that, while Sabine does indeed make a lot of great content, some of her most viewed videos (when factoring in how long since uploaded) are the generic takedowns of academia e.g. “This is why physics is dying” has rocketed to almost 1m views in 4 weeks and likely prompted Farina’s video.

He acknowledges it is not her fault that a particular community latch on to those videos, but at a point she must be aware of it (it would be naive to think a professional youtuber would not be aware of the content that is earning them most of their salary) so is knowingly fueling it.

As for the distinction between anti-science and anti-academia, yes that distinction exists and yes, Sabine is largely the latter but…at the end of the day, her latest video is titled “Science is failing”.
Which is absolutely fuel for the antivaxers, climate change deniers, heck flat earthers…none of these people would say they are anti-science. They would all say that true (scotsman) science would confirm their views to be correct, it’s just that the establishment is not doing true science. And I don’t think it’s clear enough – certainly not from the titles – that Sabine is not saying the same thing.

40

Sabine Hossenfelder is a well-credentialed theoretical physicist and a skilled science communicator. I’ve been subscribed to her YouTube channel for a while and enjoy many of her videos, particularly those that lean into pro-science topics. I also like some of her sillier content—her dry sense of humor is right up my alley. I steer clear of videos with titles that suggest they might veer into anti- or “woo” science, though. Lately, she does seem to be posting more of those.

I give her the benefit of the doubt, assuming these clickbait titles are partly to help with monetization. After all, she’s only human, and she probably has bills to pay, just like the rest of us. And who knows—maybe if some of her “woo”-leaning viewers stick around for her real science videos, they might actually learn something.

So, here’s my advice: watch her pro-science videos to learn, her silly ones to laugh, and skip the “woo” altogether. Do that, and all is well.