A number of people have been privately asking me about the recent Guardian article (and

accompanying Op-Ed by Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy) gushing over a supposedlyrevolutionary new unified theory of physics by a man who officially left academia 20 years ago. Or,

as I’ve taken to calling it, Eric Weinstein’s Amazing New Theory That Solves Every Puzzling

Conundrum in Theoretical Physics Only He Hasn’t Written An Actual Paper Yet So Physicists Can’tCheck All Those Hard Mathematical Details But Trust Us, It’s Gonna Be Awesome!

Ahem. First, a couple of caveats. I’ve met Weinstein. He’s a nice guy. He’s wicked smart. He knows

way more math than I ever will (which admittedly is not saying much). I don’t doubt his sincerity,

or that of some of his supporters, which apparently includes Berkeley mathematician EdwardFrenkel. And while I doubt his grandiose claims will be borne out once all the details emerge, he

deserves to have those ideas heard, debated and evaluated (once there’s an actual paper) by hispeers. But that’s so far above my pay grade, it’s a task best left to the professional physicists, who

I’m sure are sharpening their knives as I type. (“Fresh meat!”)

No, my beef is with the Guardian for running the article in the first place. Seriously: why was it

even written? Strip away all the purple prose and you’ve got a guy who’s been out of the field for20 years, but still doing some dabbling on the side, who has an intriguing new idea that a couple of

math professors think is promising, so he got invited to give a colloquium at Oxford by his old grad

school buddy. Oh, and there’s no technical paper yet — not even a rough draft on the arxiv — so hisideas can’t even be appropriately evaluated by actual working physicists. How, exactly, does that

qualify as newsworthy? Was your bullshit detector not working that day?

I’ll tell you what happened: the Guardian was seduced by the narrative offered by a man who, in

his dual post as Simonyi professor for the public understanding of science, has proved himself to behighly adept at manipulating the media. It pains me to say this, since this is my field we’re talking

about, but the Guardian got played, plain and simple.

Admittedly, it’s a very seductive narrative. Who doesn’t thrill to the idea of an obscure unknown

genius toiling away in the shadows, snubbed by the stuffy, closed-minded academic establishment,who defies the odds and manages to achieve what all those brilliant scholars failed to do, thereby

ensuring his or her scientific immortality? I love a good story! But this is science, not Good WillHunting, and that narrative just isn’t true — or rather, it’s too simplistic.

Granted, sometimes there is such an odds-defying breakthrough, quite notably in mathematics.Ramanujam was largely self-taught and worked in isolation, and nonetheless made extraordinary

contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory and infinite series. And just this last week,there was a major advance in prime numbers by a relatively obscure math professor at the

University of New Hampshire who hadn’t published a paper since 2001. But by and large, most

significant breakthroughs occur through established scientific channels — especially when it comesto modern cosmology and theoretical physics.

“I’m trying to promote, perhaps, a new way of doing science. Let’s start with really big ideas, let’s

be brave and let’s have a discussion,” du Sautoy told The Guardian. Great idea! Except it’s not

really a new way of doing science. And as Oxford cosmologist Andrew Pontzen pointed out in aNew Scientist op-ed, nobody thought to invite any of the Oxford physicists. [UPDATE 5/26/13:

Pontzen emailed me over the weekend correcting his original statement: "Unfortunately thisstatement now turns out to be wrong. Marcus Du Sautoy did in fact think to invite the Oxford

physicists, sending an email to the head of department along with A3 posters; unfortunately no-one

spotted the talk because the email, unbeknown to Du Sautoy, was not widely circulated oradvertised on the internal web page. Apologies to all concerned that I didn't look into this deeply

enough to uncover the extra complication to the story. The remainder of my piece stands."] You

 

know, the people most qualified to evaluate Weinstein’s work. It’s hard to have a collegial dialogue

that way, especially with no technical paper on hand to provide the necessary backgroundinformation. This seems more like trying to do science via press conference.