Showing posts with label Lubos Motl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lubos Motl. Show all posts

29 June 2010

Motl Melts Down

A PhD and some physics publications is no proof against becoming a crank. Lubos Motl is a case in point. He is melting down. In a effort to criticize non-string theories of quantum gravity, he attacks the fact that a seminar with both string and non-string theory representatives is being held in Mexico. Why?

The Americans and Europeans who are working on "non-stringy quantum gravity" are just practitioners of this Mexican-level science. They're the Mexicans' true peers, so it shouldn't be surprising that they're third-rate scientists in the U.S. context. There's no string theory group in Mexico - another fact that shouldn't be shocking given Mexico's average IQ around 85. The IQ increment needed to go from non-stringy quantum gravity to string theory is around 20.


It reminds me of the people who claim that general relativity is a Jewish conspiracy that must be wrong for that reason.

Earlier in the same week, he is ranting against efforts to give elementary school students positive female role models in physics, because "the dominant association of science with maleness is . . . an objective fact and a consequence of some patterns in biology."

One would think that a physicist of all people, could focus on the ideas involved, and the merits of the scientific questions, but one would be wrong.