In physics if a theory makes a wrong prediction just say that it has not advanced to the stage at which it can make predictions. Despite what its adherents say string theory has made a prediction — the dimension, and that is wildly wrong (which is a reason string theory is so attractive). What is worse it has long been known that physics would be impossible in any dimension but 3+1, quite boring since it agrees with reality. See the OAIU book (and also GTFQM) for a rigorous proof. String theory has been proven with mathematical rigor to be impossible, thus physicists are quite enthusiastic about it.

Of course string theory has no rationale (like Bush’s Iraq policy) except for the excitement, wishful thinking and daydreaming it stimulates. The proper criteria for a theory in physics are not experiment, not mathematics, but wishful thinking and fantasy. With that criteria it does quite will.

(The requirement for truth is tricky. Theories can be complete nonsense but necessary as classical physics and Bohr’s theory show. See the OAIU book for discussion. But string theory does not fit into that either. Nor is it simple. It is wildly complicated and hideously ugly. Perhaps that is why so many physicists are so obsessed with it. Occam would be furious that anyone is considering such a theory.)

It is strange that anyone would consider investing in a theory that has been proven to be nonsense. Of course no physics journal would consider publishing the proof that the dimension must be what experiment gives. That would spoil all the fun.

Physicists are very concerned about ethics. Yet they find it perfectly acceptable to allow people to waste their careers and much public money working on something that is known wrong. Nor do they care about misleading the public (look at the best selling books that are nonsense) which will eventually undermine the support of science. (Of course no one cares about academic freedom.  Those who do not want to waste their careers producing nonsense do not have that freedom since they are not allowed to know that what they are doing must be wrong.)

As Goldhaber points out this is all quite unscientific. So why isn’t it being fought more rigorously? Rather than fighting it “physicists” accept it enthusiastically!

Another example of physicists’ desire to find the most esoteric, complicated, convoluted explanation for simple results is quantum mechanics. Why nature must be quantum mechanical is almost trivial.  See the GTFQM and OAIU books, plus QM,QFT.

Then there is the daydream that string theory will produce a quantum theory of gravity. This ignores the fact that there is already one, the only possible one since it is required by geometry: GR. See MRPG. Where did the confusion that it is not quantum mechanical come from? It is completely quantum mechanical, including having uncertainty principles. What more does anyone want? But GR, while correct, isn’t much fun.

David Gross says we still don’t know what string theory is. Sure we do. It is complete nonsense.

The best thing that could be done to advance physics would be to bring Occam back to life.

For further discussion and other problems with these see the books and my blog.

Physicists like to take the obvious and develop convoluted and impossible theories to explain what is beyond explanation. This explains nothing about physics but much about physicists.

One person trying to deal with it is Jocelyn Bell Burnell.  She is well known for her work as a graduate student, which won her advisor a Nobel Prize. He was given the award for his brilliance in finding a student who discovered pulsars. These are now known to be rapidly rotating neutron stars but the signals were then thought to be communications from little green men (gender inequality goes back a long way; little green women were never considered). Of course she was never given an award. But why should she? She never found a student who made a major discovery. It turns out however that little green men were involved. They were on the Nobel Prize committee. What they were communicating can only be guess at.

Replacing science by religion is not unusual in physics. A half century ago, for example, there was much excitement about ideas extended from dispersion relations, involving smoothness of surfaces.  Its center was at Berkeley and its leader was Geoffrey Chew. There was so much excitement that people at Berkeley asked each other “are you a member of the Chewish religion?”. That idea had no real rationale and was wrong but was not crackpot.  String theory is crackpot. That is why it lasted so much longer. It is still the leading religion of physicists.

And the problem is not only in physics. One particularly cruel example is autism, a devastating neurological disorder, now known to be due to brain abnormalities. However the experts decided that it was do to the coldness of mothers, named refrigerator mothers. The way the mothers held the baby in the first 30 seconds caused devastating abnormalities. Of course there was no evidence of this but that was unnecessary.  They were experts so qualified to decide even with no evidence at all (and, like string theorists, no matter how absurd their views). There is one thing experts know: how expert they are.

And this was particularly cruel, adding to the burden of a parent with a severely sick child the extra burden of (nonexistent) guilt. But experts responsibility is to their expertness, not to facts, not to patients, not to those with grievous misfortune, but to themselves.

And they were allowed to get away with it.

All too often experts are so proud of their expertise their heads swell up in pride so much that it causes brain damage.  This is quite clear in physics, especially with string theory, and in so many other places. Experts are dangerous.

For example in the most widely used approximate calculational method, perturbation theory, certain integrals in intermediate steps have a lower limit of 0 so are infinite. This perturbs “physicists” immensely, so they try to revise nature (which is why they developed string theory which has the great attraction of being known wrong) to eliminate thus “problem”. However when all steps of the algorithm are completed the result is finite and correct. The infinities are meaningless and are purely the result of stopping in the middle. If another approximation scheme were used this “problem” would never have arisen. Nevertheless “physicists” feel that this make-believe problem is so important that nature must be changed (for example by changing particles, which do not appear in the theory and have nothing to do with these integrals, to strings).

Then there are the absurd beliefs about the vacuum. There is a way of drawing pictures to keep the bookkeeping straight in this particular way of approximating. Some of these pictures can be fancifully interpreted to imply absurdities about the vacuum. But there is a difference between bookkeeping and physics. Unfortunately “physicists” do not understand this. They will claim it is just their extreme incompetence.

Reading the “physics” literature shows so many examples of the difficulties “physicists” have in dealing with the world of reality (or maybe it is just fraud).

We start then with the most popular subject of modern “physics”. String theory is designed to solve the problems caused by point particles. However there is nothing in any formalism that even hints at particles, let alone point particles. Where did this idea of particles come from? Could it really be that thousands of physicists are wasting their careers to solve the problems caused by particles with not a single one even noticing that there are none? Don’t dots on screens in double-slit experiments show that objects are points? Obviously not, they are consequences of conservation of energy. Moreover there are no problems. There are infinities in intermediate steps of a particular approximation scheme, but they are all gone by the end. With a different scheme the idea of infinities would never have arisen. The laws of physics are not determined by physicists’ favorite approximation method.

But these are not the real problems. What could be worse? String theory requires that the dimension be 10 or 11, in slight disagreement with reality. If predictions of your theory do not agree with experiment just say that it is not yet able to make any, while the ones it does make are carefully ignored. It has long been known that physics (a universe) is impossible in any dimension but 3+1. Why? Coordinate rotations give wavefunction transformations. If the wavefunction gives spin up along an axis it must be transformed to one giving it at some angle to a different axis. Coordinates being real are transform by orthogonal (rotation) groups; wavefunctions being complex require unitary groups. These groups must be homomorphic. They are not as shown by counting the numbers of generators and of commuting ones. Fortunately there is one exception, else there could be no universe: dimension 3+1. Why 3+1, not 4? The rotation group in 4 dimensions, SO(4), is unique in splitting into two independent SO(3) groups. It is not simple, only semisimple; SO(3,1) is simple. Whether God wants it or not the dimension must be 3+1. It is mathematics that is omnipotent. God, Nature and we, and even string theorists, must do what mathematics wants: accept dimension 3+1.

Thus string theory is a mathematically impossible theory, in violent disagreement with experiment, designed to solve the terrible nonexistent problems caused by nonexistent particles. Perhaps that is why “physicists” are so enthusiastic about it.

Next is the object that billions of dollars are being spent looking for: the nonexistent Higgs. There has been much interest in gauge transformations and in trying to extend them. These are the form that Poincar‚ transformations take for massless objects, and only these. This is trivial.

Consider a photon and an electron with parallel momenta and spins along their momenta. We transform leaving the momenta unchanged but the spin of the electron is no longer along its momentum. The spin of the photon is unchanged (electromagnetism is transverse). Despite the opinion of physicists to the contrary this is required not by God but (omnipotent) mathematics, the Poincar‚ group. Here are transformations acting on the electron but not the photon, which cannot be. What are these? Obviously gauge transformations. So massless objects — only — have gauge transformations.

The belief in Higgs bosons comes from the wish that all objects be invariant under gauge transformations, strongly disagreeing with experiment. However physicists are so enthusiastic about gauge transformations they try to apply them to massive objects. There are reasons for the laws of physics, like geometry and group theory, but these do not include physicists’ emotional reactions. So all objects are massless. Nature does not agree. Physicists believe that if their theories do not agree with Nature, then Nature must be revised. Instead of giving that belief up it is kept — physicists are emotionally attached to it — and a new field, that of Higgs bosons, is introduced to give objects mass. This is like saying that since orbital angular momentum has integer values all angular momentum has. Since this is not true a new field is introduced to produce half-integer values. That would make no sense and neither do Higgs bosons. This introduces a new particle designed to make Nature agree with physicists, and also a force to make objects massive, which should have other effects and should show up elsewhere. This introduces (at least) two unnecessary, unsupported assumptions. Occam would be very upset. Actually if he knew what is going on in modern “physics” he would be furious. There are no Higgs.

Why isn’t there a cosmological constant? It sets a function (the left side of Einstein’s equation) equal to a constant which is like saying that x^3 + 5x = 7 for all values of x. The cosmological constant must be 0, unfortunately. With one gravity would have a fascinating property: a wave would be detected an infinitely long time before being emitted.

Let us quantize gravity, replacing a quantum theory with wild assumptions. Why must general relativity be the theory of gravity, thus the quantum theory of gravity? It is required by geometry (the Poincar‚ group) being its only massless helicity-2 representation. It is a quantum theory (consistent) not classical (inconsistent), having a wavefunction and uncertainty principles. It is different being necessarily nonlinear. Why don’t people like it?

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