Crackpots, contrarians, and the free market of ideas

Some time back we learned that arxiv.org, the physics e-print server that has largely superseded the role of traditional print journals, had taken a major step towards integration with the blogosphere, by introducing trackbacks. This mechanism allows blogs to leave a little link associated with the abstract of a paper on arxiv to which the blog post is referring; you can check out recent trackbacks here. It’s a great idea, although not without some potential for abuse.

Now Peter Woit reports that he has been told that arxiv will not accept trackbacks from his blog. Peter, of course, is most well-known for being a critic of string theory. In this he is not alone; the set of “critics of string theory” includes, in their various ways, people like Roger Penrose, Richard Feynman, Daniel Friedan, Lee Smolin, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Robert Laughlin, Howard Georgi, and Sheldon Glashow. The difference is that these people were all famous for something else before they became critics of string theory; in substance, however, I’m not sure that their critiques are all that different.

Unfortunately, Peter has not been given an explicit reason why trackbacks from his blog have been banned, although his interactions with the arxiv have a long history. It’s not hard to guess, of course; the moderators presumably feel that his criticisms have no merit and shouldn’t be associated with individual paper abstracts.

I think it’s a serious mistake, for many reasons. On the one hand, I certainly don’t think that scientists have any obligation to treat the opinions of complete crackpots with the same respect that they treat those of their colleagues; on a blog, for example, I see nothing wrong with banning comments from people who have nothing but noise to contribute yet feel compelled to keep contributing it. But trackbacks are just about the least intrusive form of communication on the internet, and the most easily ignored; I have never contemplated preventing trackbacks from anyone, and it would be hard for anyone to rise to the level of obnoxiousness necessary for me to do so.

On the other hand, I don’t think there is any sense in which Peter is a crackpot, even if I completely disagree with his ideas about string theory. He is a contrarian, to be sure, not falling in line with the majority view, but that’s hardly the same thing. Admittedly, it can be difficult to articulate the difference between principled disagreement and complete nuttiness (the crackpot index is, despite being both funny and telling, not actually a very good guide), but we usually know it when we see it.

Since I’m not a card-carrying string theorist, I can draw analogies with skeptics in my own field of cosmology. I’ve certainly been hard on folks who push alternative cosmologies (see here and here, for example). But there is definitely a spectrum. Perfectly respectable scientists from Roger Penrose to yours truly have suggested alternatives to cherished ideas like inflation, dark matter, and dark energy; nobody would argue that such ideas are cranky in any sense. Respectable scientists have even questioned whether the universe is accelerating, which is harder to believe but still worth taking seriously. Further down the skepticism scale, we run into folks that disbelieve in the Big Bang model itself. From my own reading of the evidence, there is absolutely no reason to take these people seriously; however, some of them have good track records as scientists, and it doesn’t do much harm to let them state their opinions. In fact, you can sharpen your own understanding by demonstrating precisely why they are wrong, as Ned Wright has shown. Only at the very bottom of the scale do we find the true crackpots, who have come up with a model of the structure of spacetime that purportedly replaces relativity and looks suspiciously like it was put together with pipe cleaners and pieces of string. There is no reason to listen to them at all.

On such a scale, I would put string skepticism of the sort Peter practices somewhere around skepticism about the acceleration of the universe. Maybe not what I believe, but a legitimate opinion to hold. And the standard for actually preventing someone from joining part of the scientific discourse, for example by leaving trackbacks at arxiv, should typically err on the side of inclusiveness; better to have too many voices in there than to exclude someone without good reason. So I think it’s very unfortunate that trackbacks from Not Even Wrong have been excluded, and I hope the folks at arxiv will reconsider their decision.

Of course, there is a huge difference between string theory and the standard cosmological model; the latter has been tested against data in numerous ways. String theory, as rich and compelling as it may be, is still a speculative idea at this point; it might very well be wrong. Losing sight of that possibility doesn’t do us any good as scientists.

Update: Jacques Distler provides some insight into the thinking of the arxiv advisory board.

110 Comments

110 thoughts on “Crackpots, contrarians, and the free market of ideas”

  1. Thanks Sean!

    It has been a peculiar experience dealing with the arXiv about this. Especially because of the difficulty of sensibly moderating the comment section on my blog, I’m well aware that moderation issues can be tricky and at times a not completely transparent system is a good idea (otherwise one ends up spending all one’s time debating with crackpots the validity of their ideas, exactly what they want). But right now I have no indication from them of why all trackbacks to my blog are being disallowed (not just ones to the contrarian posts about string theory). The one official response I did get from a Cornell librarian indicated that they still are not sure what their final moderation system for trackbacks will be. Perhaps when they get one this will get sorted out.

  2. Dumb Biologist

    I haven’t a dog in the specific arXiv issue beyond an interest in the fronteirs of science and how investigation of those frontiers shapes the scientific discourse. As physics is, in my estimation, the paragon of human intellectual achievement and exploration, it is, quite simply, a terribly important enterprise. Perhaps the most important. Therefore, it’s troubling to some of us on the outside to see evidence of suppression of ideas that, while controversial or perhaps even erroneous, are not blatantly insane or fatuous. If the arXiv is truly so important, even the appearance of ideological bias in its administration (beyond the simply unavoidable parameters dictated by the scientific method) is chilling. There’s been vocal condemnation of suppressive meddling in scientific communication and investigation by theocrats and other such political ideologues. It’s nice to see politicians aren’t the only ones being asked to avoid censoring arguably reasonable ideas, especially without explanation. The wonder of the scientific community is its application of a method by which individual human shortcommings are compensated for by the collective effort. Thanks for helping to keep that effort robust, Sean.

  3. Sean,

    As you point out there is a delicate balance between keeping the crackpots out but yet not censoring any potentially legitimate criticisms/alternative theories to prevailing paradigms. I would humbly suggest that the error should be on the side of inclusion vs. exclusion. Certainly not allowing the trackbacks has the smell of censorship and I for the life of me can’t understand why this should be a particularly troubling issue for arxiv.

    Elliot

  4. Hmmm……. where to start?

    As a long time reader of Peter’s blog, a journal editor, and a (former)
    member of the ArXiv advisory board, I have a few comments. I offer them
    for what they’re worth. Bear in mind that they do not represent the official opinion of the ArXiv, its advisory board, Johns Hopkins University, or any scientific journal or organization, past, present and future.

    The ArXiv instituted a standard that they would allow trackbacks only to blogs run by active researchers. That excludes Peter, who likes to discuss physics, but is not a researcher. It also excludes lots of other people, although I can’t remember anyone else’s name coming up. I’m not going to hazard a guess as to the role that existence of Peter’s blog played in settling on this standard.

    For reasons that are not clear to me, this standard was not communicated to Peter for some months. I don’t think most of the board was aware that this was the case. I didn’t realize it until Peter commented in one of his postings that he had never heard back from the board. After that posting, the question was raised online, and Peter (I think) received a letter explaining this policy.

    If you think that this standard is inappropriate, send a note to active members of the board. Community feedback is good. For myself, I will say that I find Peter’s blog very informative, but as a theoretical astrophysicist I don’t think I’m in the primary audience for it.

    Finally, I don’t think the ArXiv has replaced journals in astrophysics. Nor is it likely to in any field where refereeing remains an important part of archival publication. Opinions may reasonably differ on this, but I would not have agreed to edit the Astrophysical Journal if I thought that it had become obsolete.

  5. One of the recurring themes on Peter’s blog is the idea that physics (as with all sciences) needs to be experimentally testable. It is hard to imagine a more mainstream and less contrarian idea. Yet Susskind, and apparently others as well, seem to be attempting to remove this restriction from string theory (without also admitting that they are now doing philosophy rather than physics). If the ArXiv were censoring crackpottery, then this latter group would certainly fit the bill better than Peter’s criticism of string theory.

    But if the exclusion is solely based on active research status, as Ethan states above, then the trackback issue makes more sense.

  6. Dumb Biologist

    Is hep-th/0206135 not the product of research?

    I’m not asking a rhetorical question here, I’m genuinely curious about the answer.

  7. Ethan,

    This is the first time I’ve heard that the arXiv has a policy of only allowing trackbacks to blogs run by “active researchers”, and that the arXiv advisory board has decided that I am not such a researcher. This standard was never communicated to me in any of my dealings with people at the arXiv or on the arXiv advisory board. It’s pretty bizarre to have spent so much time trying unsuccessfully to find out why the arXiv was not allowing these trackbacks, only to find out the reason from you on the comment section of this blog.

    I strongly object to the characterization of me as “not an active researcher”. If that’s the case, I don’t quite know what it is I’m doing during the many hours a week I spend thinking about how to use geometric methods in representation theory to formulate 2d chiral gauge theories in a new way and writing out notes about this in a notebook. I attend conferences, give talks on my research (most recently at Dartmouth and at a conference here in New York), and have posted a long manuscript on the subject at the arXiv (hep-th/0206135). I’m not about to argue with anyone who says I should write up more of what I am doing and get it out there where other people could evaluate it, but I will strongly disagree that I’m not actively involved with research.

    What is the arXiv advisory board’s standard for an “active researcher”? Is this based on number of peer-reviewed publications? In recent years I haven’t seen much point in the peer-review system in particle theory, but if that is the requirement for allowing trackbacks to a blog, the arXiv advisory board should at least make this public. Not letting me know this despite my repeated efforts to communicate with people at the arXiv is a very strange way of doing business.

    Anyway, at least now that I have been (unofficially) informed about what the reason is for the arXiv advisory board decision, I’ll take up with them the issue of what exactly is an “active researcher” and whether or not I am one.

  8. Surely there is a way to circumvent the ban? Why not post trackbacks on Peter’s behalf here and provide the link to Peter’s blog?

    Such an action may help to change the minds of the arXiv administrators.

  9. Peter,

    I’m a little surprised to hear that the policy behind the decision was not communicated clearly to you. Actually … very surprised. What I posted above is my understanding of the policy. If you feel that characterizing you as not an “active researcher” is unfair, I think you should appeal the decision. When the topic came up I did a quick search under your name and didn’t find much in the published literature. However, I won’t pretend that I know where to look for papers in your field. I checked the World of Science database.

    I also think the idea behind the policy could use some public feedback, but I’m going to leave that to others. I’ve said my piece. Comments from other people, including anyone reading this thread, would be far more effective.

    Let me add that I enjoy lurking on your blog.

    Ethan

  10. Ethan,

    Thanks, both for finally letting me know what is going on (and for assuring me that I’m not a crank!). Glad to hear that you enjoy the blog.

    It’s not just the case that this policy was not communicated to me clearly, it was not communicated at all. The only communication I’ve received from the arXiv about why my trackbacks were not appearing was the one I got last month from Jean Poland. She had told me that she would prefer that I not make it public, but I’m incredibly annoyed at the way the arXiv has dealt with me on this issue. So here, in full, is what I have heard from the arXiv:

    Dear Dr. Woit,

    I apologize that it has taken this long to respond to your question. The trackback feature on arXiv.org is experimental and we are in the process of learning how blogs and trackbacks are viewed in the physics community. We are not able to accept all trackback links; we are developing processes for trackbacks that will parallel our endorsement and moderation procedures. We have not yet automated notification procedures to let blog writers know that their request for trackback linking has not been accepted, and your request has fallen into that group. Our moderators have not recommended that your trackback be incorporated in arXiv.org.

    Again, I am sorry that internal miscommunication has resulted in such a long response time.

    Jean Poland

  11. Peter,

    Her reply is correct. There are continued discussions on how to moderate trackbacks.

    It does omit any indication of why some trackbacks have been accepted, and others, including yours, have not.

    Ethan

  12. Pingback: Not Even Wrong » Blog Archive » Letter to ArXiv Advisory Board

  13. Respectable scientists have even questioned whether the universe is accelerating, which is harder to believe but still worth taking seriously.

    Damn – I thought this was referring to me… but then I noticed the word “respectable.”

  14. Sean,

    Would you say Peter’s knowledge equals Cliffords? Is this a fair statement to make, in context of string/M theory??

    On that basis alone, would they had been right to reject trackbacks, that would link his site?

    They are respectful of Peter, but there is the question about his experience on it?

    This is the “impression” I am getting. Is his Knowledge current, and to date? Those who study the topic, would they have been satisfied to have him speak for them?

  15. Pingback: Often in Error...

  16. Plato, even if Peter knows less about string theory, it is still a bad idea to ban trackbacks to his site.

    If Peter was just making propaganda against string theory and, say, was censoring valid comments from string theorists on his own blog, then you could make a case for banning trackbacks to Peter’s blog.

  17. Sean, thanks for that link to Ned Wright’s excellent page. I especially like the page http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/tiredlit.htm since it exposes the fraudulent science which falsely claims that redshift has other scientific explanations than expansion.

    Peter Woit’s does have ideas of his own in how to approach quantum field theory. His respectable approach in http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0206135 is to put forward a conjecture:

    “The quantum field theory of the standard model may be understood purely in terms of the representation theory of the automorphism group of some geometric structure.”

    Using Lie spinors and Clifford algebras he comes up with an illustrative model on page 51, which looks as if it will do the job, but then adds the guarded comment:

    “The above comments are exceedingly speculative and very far from what one needs to construct a consistent theory. They are just meant to indicate how the most basic geometry of spinors and Clifford algebras in low dimensions is rich enough to encompass the standard model and seems to be naturally reflected in the electro-weak symmetry properties of Standard Model particles.”

    This guarded approach needs to be contrasted to the hype surrounding string theory.

    On the wider problem of crackpotism increasing the backgrund noise: Nature is the actually final judge of all theories, and historically favors crazy ideas. But that isn’t enough to convince me that string theory is right.

  18. At least part of the reason Peter Woit doesn’t get trackbacks from arxiv.org is because Jacques Distler thinks he is a crank. Plato in his postings seems to think Woit is something of a crank also. This feeling is probably widely shared among string theorists. But string theory isn’t the only game in town. Would the string theorists who run arxiv.org ban trackbacks from Lee Smolin? Would they allow trackbacks to blogs of grad students who work on string theory or loop quantum gravity and thus know a lot less than Clifford on the subject?

  19. You can never draw a sharp line between scientists and crackpots and it is very likely that I would draw the line on the opposite side of PW than Sean does. Expecting that someone has a right for his blog articles to be published or linked in scientific journals and their electronic counterparts is a crazy idea, especially if these blog articles are primarily addressed to completely moronic crackpots such as Chris Oakley, Danny Lunsford, Quantoken, and others, and it is often very difficult to distinguish in what sense Peter’s opinions are better than the opinions of the crackpots.

    Peter’s idea about physics beyond the Standard Model are completely silly, of course – and they are often squarely on the crackpot territory (off-diagonal embedding of SU(2) into SU(2) x SU(2) or worshipping of Dirac’s equation are examples). On the other hand, however, I feel that the opinions of the other, more well-known “critics” of string theory are not much better, and they are only treated more seriously because those folks became famous for their previous scientific discoveries.

    I fully support blocking most of the trackbacks from his website, and if these policies cause serious problems, I would support to cancel the trackback system altogether. From a moral viewpoint, I find it outrageous that people who don’t even try to contribute anything to science – and who build on purely negative support of various crackpots and science-haters – should have a better access to scientific resources than, for example, graduate students who work hard and struggle with serious scientific questions.

  20. As usual, Lubos makes my case far better than I ever could. The arXiv moderators consider Lubos’s to be one of a very small number of blogs that they accept trackbacks from, while censoring any trackbacks to mine. I can’t imagine what other evidence anyone needs to see that there is a problem with the arXiv moderation system, and that string theory fanaticism is at the root of the problem.

  21. Lubos Motl,

    You do have tremendous resources at Harvard and a research grant to work in extra-dimensional speculative string theory (or is it UFOs in the landscape now?), yet you then dismiss the efforts of other people as “science haters”?

    If you automatically dismiss all alternatives as being the work of “science haters”, that indicates paranoia.

    Or, by “science” do you simply mean the following acronym?

    Stringy
    Censors,
    Including
    Extradimensional
    Narcissism
    Committee
    Enthusiasts

    Just saying that others hate your pet string theory is not objectivity. Please stop name-calling and grow up a bit.

Comments are closed.

Scroll to Top