Some time back we learned that arxiv.org, the physics e-print server that has largely superseded the role of traditional print journals, had taken a major step towards integration with the blogosphere, by introducing trackbacks.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.
Seems if they value quantity (with/without quality?), the thing to do (pain in the ass as it certainly would be) is to provide precisely that. It would be an interesting test of the newly-clarified system.
‘We have tons of observations, or facts, that require explaining…’ – Daryl
Woit does make this very point. I notice you don’t include the graviton, 11 dimensional supergravity, but you do mention supersymmetric (SUSY) partners. The issue is connecting unifying the forces of the Standard Model (strong and electroweak QFT) and adding gravity.
The observations you list make it easy to see if the theory is on track. Take a look at the new paper http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0603022 which attempts to do the same as string theory, unifying the Standard Model with general relativity (gravity). It doesn’t explain the list of observations you give, but it doesn’t involk unobserved extra dimensions of string theory either. Yet Lubos Motl is free to publish an abusive ridicule of that paper on his blog http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/03/theory-of-everything-from-trinions.html, which has arXiv trackback.
Unless Woit is allowed trackbacks to arXiv stringy papers, there is thus prejudice at arXiv in favor of strings.
I think the agenda is quite clear in it’s discription, and if held to a higher standard, what say this is not the case with it’s demands?
While I had wanted soemthing clear in a arguement, the limitations of not doing current research might have limited perspetive about all those things Daryl is talking about. So vast the subject, one hand sweeping, does not make the arguement.
The other option was, not to implore trackback at all. But the tool(declaring itself as) is quite useful in a bloggery such as cosmic variance, that you would have been a fool not to see the interconnecting thoughts and ideas, that lead from one post to another.
The standard might have been higher in the other case? Sorry cosmic variance, it’s the thought that counts:)
Peter still implores link connections does he not?
What’s the issue? It is deeper motivated, and those who support him, recognize that any of us might have this same thing called pride?
But Kevin in another thread said it best, when referring to statues and such.
The legacy?
While our contributions might had been missed, are now part and parcel of the time line of research and developement. Anonimity, hides the true name, but not what one may wish to contribute, as less than, self-evident Current research is what leads us into the future with science. Not some constant reverberation of the same ole? 🙂
I was quite surprised to learn that Peter is not allowed to submit trackbacks and I think this is the wrong decision. He has one main point which is that realistically, we know string theory only on shell and perturbatively. In addition, dualities and BPS properties give us some non-perturbative information. But if nature happens to to be in a phase that has a weakly coupled description we might have a hard time identifying it as a stringy world even with a Planck scale accelerator given our current lack of understanding of general M-Theory.
Peter thinks this is a really worrying realization others (including me) can still get a good night’s sleep after realizing it. After all, we might have learned a bit more about M-Theory before building that collider 😉 . As I understand it, Peter thinks this possible problem is not realized by enough people and it is his duty to tell the world about it.
However, there are many other topics Peter writes about in his blog and I know a large number of string theorist who enjoy reading it even if only for the entertainment value (and these people would not consider one of those crackpot emails that Einstein was wrong at all entertaining). Peter’s blog is valued because he has interesting things to say about math and physics even if not too many of his physicist readers will agree with his interpretations. And in no way, he can be considered a crackpot. The difference is that he is susceptible to arguments and differs only on issues that cannot clearly be settled by rational argument. And maybe he overstates his point from time to time. But so are others (and I would include some of Lubos’s physics postings as well, especially when he reacts like Pavlov’s dog to a new paper on loop quantum gravity not to mention his postings on issues outside physics).
Even if Javques in his posting over at Musings specifically asked for it, I would not like to discuss the general criterion of “active researcher” and if it applies to Peter or not. Given the prominence of his blog, it is not unreasonable that when drawing up this criterion it was decided beforehand that “Not Even Wrong” should not be included and then a policy crafted to that effect. Not that I say that was the case but Peter’s blog was there and well known before arXive started allowing trackbacks.
If suddenly, the arXive changed their moderation policy regarding preprints and suddenly hep-th would be flooded by ‘relativity is wrong’ papers and ‘i have created my own theory of everything and it is based on 2(duality)+3(colors)=5(pentagram)’ pamphlets that would be really really bad because that would have an impact on everyday’s work. But listing one or two trackbacks too much does not really cause much irritation. So far, I have learned about the contents of many papers from blogs but never learned about a blog entry from a trackback (given that I use an rss aggregator) I don’t think it would hurt if together with Peter a few blogs with much lower standards than his were allowed as well.
Executive summary: Peter’s a reasonable guy and I would like to see trackbacks to “Not Even Wrong” on the arXive.
Thanks Robert!
A simple solution:
In principle, one could give submitters of
preprints the possibility to remove unwanted trackbacks. Of course, you must have a system that removes the obvious spam. But whether or not someone likes a trackback from Woit’s blog is a personal matter. Lubos
won’t like it but I won’t mind.
One can think of giving authors the option to disallow trackbacks altogether. If the author doesn’t do that then trackbacks to his article can appear and the author would be given an email notification. Then the author could take a look and decide to remove the trackback if he feels it is inappropriate. He could then also decide to block all trackbacks from that particular blog.
This interactive system would take a lot of work out of the hands of the arXiv moderators and end the dispute were to draw the line about what are appropriate trackbacks and what are not.
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That pretty much closes the case for me.
Does anyone know how many other people, besides Peter Woit, have asked for trackback and been denied?
FP said
Yes, he clarified! The decision for blocking is clearly not scientific based. Rest of Distler “parafernalia” is a cloud to hidden the facts. The basic question underpining all this stuff is very simple to understand:
If string theory was great really great, it would be easy to rebate Peter Woit and other’s criticism to it. Since string “theory” (to say so) is “safe”, any possible criticism may be eliminated from the very begining before average guys, mass media, and some funding agencies discover that string “theory” is: 40 years of disaster.
I also find interesting Distler’s asumption of “active research” in function of “number of publications/preprints”. Apparently, ArXiv prefers guys with 100 wrong or irrelevant papers before guys with a dozen of really good papers. I prefer read a paper where the CC was computed from first principles rather than dozens and dozens and dozens of string-oriented preprints where at the best it is suggested that the CC is a kind of misterium and that one just can find bounds to it via obstruse (and wrong) statistical analysis on seudo-infinite hypotetical landscapes for 10-11D imagined universes with no link with physics we can verify at laboratory.
Moreover, as stated by Nobel laureate Robertson, today Yang or Einstein would be rejected for submiting on ArXiv.
Juan R.
Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)
Lets discuss some of the relevance of information on this trackback page? Not the content referred or whose trackback it is.
I am presenting a solution to trackbacks here, as I demonstrate information on trackback page.
1. That trackback can be replaced by reference url blockquote.
2. Other ways that can be derived from, book referenced and parargraph, as immediate recognition of owner link. In this case- http://arxiv.org
The idea is to make net versatile in click/space. Does this qualify?
Comments or suggestions?
Example:
Trackbacks
Software recognition of information within articles in question, are handled the same way. Adheres to ownership and recognition of material. This cannot be changed in any way.
Verification by direct link will prove any attempts to change the wording. Click/space will show and maintains the quick funcitonality that must continued to be strived for,a s we introduce video and radio to the world of the internet
Further comments or suggestions?
The purpose is not to have the “internet strangled” by structure, all the while recognizing a “higher standard” to the written word?
Okay this is the final post here in what is the contentioous issue facing safeguard developers like Jacque.
Why Jacque is the way he is? He can refute this point or not? I can’t do it there and it is important that others understand the motivation.
Example:A Derivative of other than, direct linked paragraph.
Interview with a link spammerBy Charles Arthur
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/31/link_spamer_interview/
Gulp:) Progression and Advancement, Jacque. REmember?
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Some BlogSpam solutions Which kind have you employed? And some information on ARIN ( American Registry for Internet Numbers
Imagine, if the gun lobbyists, had to register their IP addresses, as users? 🙂 Just wondering here how much “anonmyizer software sales” would rise?
Interestingly, when one asks woit:
“Why don’t you write a review article.
Simply collect 100 Stringtheory papers and show why the arguments therein are so mathematically week and/or physically misleading. Then make 4 such articles, send them to physical review and then to Arxiv.
This would be easy for you, since you would only lengthen your blog postings with stronger arguments and you would fulfill easily the criterion of an active researcher. It would you take in the standard scientific procedure where even review articles belong to.”
woit deletes that comment. But it wasn’t even a slightest critique in it.
When one goes angry on such a text, then this is, because of his inabillity to formulate critisism on the level of scientific appropriatnes.
Woit wrote, that he cannot write papers with scientific results whitch could falsify some landscape models, because he thinks that this is generally impossible and the arguments in these papers would be often weak which he claims is the reason why he critisise them.
But when asked, if he could write a scientific review article on the whole bunch of weak arguments in stringtheory papers, that is: to discuss 100 papers and write why they are weak and why they have no or a unsure meaning, then woit gets angry and goes over to censoring and deleting.
I therefore think that the case can be made, he has not much scientific to say. Otherwise he could write such a review article. And his lack of publications is due to an unabillity of doing research. He is, as Distler pointed out just “a net-personality”.
That is: Arxiv as a scientific server was right to ban him. Someone who only aims at entertaining the public with critisism and lack of scientific abillity is not the one, a serious researcher who is struggling with a field in crisis might want to comment his papers for public demolition.
Benjamin
I think that the trackback issue is much less serious than the censorship against posting to arXiv which in practice means a professional death.
For a decade it become impossible for me to post anything to Physics Archives. Mathematical Subject Classification Tables of American Mathematical Society has alink to my homepage about Topological Geometrodynamics in the section devoted to Mathematics of Quantum Theory. Recently I was invited in to Marguis Who’s Who in Science and Engineering. One might think that on this basis I should not be regarded as a non-crackpot by any person possessing IQ above 100 but the wise men in the board seem to think differently.
Certainly I am not the only one. There is large number of active researchers publishing in refereed journals who suffer arXiv.org censorship
Matti Pitkanen
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‘… woit gets angry and goes over to censoring and deleting…’ – Benni
Could it be that the comment deleted which you reproduce here is not very useful? What’s the evidence of ander in censoring? You get a comment deleted and take that of evidence of anger? Woit has already said in response to Dr Christine Dantas that he will prepare more papers for arxiv, so your comment was just superfluous.
Here’s a comment of mine he deleted yesterday, which I had saved:
“March 9th, 2006 at 6:42 am
“‘… (I’m a lot more elitist and willing to see suppression of crackpottery than many of my commenters), …’ Peter
“Alternatives to failed mainstream ideas are not automatically wrong. Those who are censored for being before their time or for contradicting mainstream non-tested speculation, are hardly crackpot.
“As a case in point, see http://cdsweb.cern.ch/search.py?recid=688763&ln=en which was peer-reviewed and published but censored off arxiv according to the author (presumably for contradicting stringy speculation). It is convenient for Motl to dismiss this as crackpot.
“It is curious that nobody remembers the problems that Einstein had when practically the entire physics establishment of Germany in the 1930s was coerced by fascists to call him a crackpot.
“I think Pauli’s categories of “right”, “wrong”, and “not even wrong” are more objective than calling suggestions “crackpot”.”
My comment was exactly:
“Because you said that you are not interested anymore in your former subject, and your interest seems now to lie at criticising string theory, why don’t you write a review article.
Simply collect 100 Stringtheory papers and show why the arguments therein are so mathematically week and/or physically misleading. Then make 4 such articles, send them to physical review and then to Arxiv.
This would be easy for you, since you would only lengthen your blog postings with stronger arguments and you would fulfill easily the criterion of an active researcher. It would you take in the standard scientific procedure where even review articles belong to.”
For someone who is able to formulate critisism in a scientific way, it should be no problem for writing a review article that articulates this.
I wrote this comment as a hint, because woit himself said, that his interests don’t lie anymore in the subjects he had pursued before. This comment was not unappropriate and directly addressed to a sentence from woit himself.
But isn’t Woit’s position essentially that string theory isn’t well motivated? So, to string theorists his comments will always be a bit blah blah blah. It’s a bit like a negative referee report I once received. It said that there was nothing wrong with the paper, but it should be rejected because the whole approach was not well motivated (I did manage to publish the paper in another journal, though).
Matti:I think that the trackback issue is much less serious than the censorship against posting to arXiv which in practice means a professional death.
Do you think his mathematics will have soured?
I don’t think so. If one is held in the realm of the mathematics without moving to a larger framerwork of consideration, how would this help “other views” of what the geometries might have implied in physics processes?
Is there a “sole right of expression” that he might have been arguing about, that you sweep everything else away(censored), or that we should ignore “everything else,” but your geometrodynamic view?
Lee Smolin summation views on quantum geometries was non judgemental, fair. Room was left for “good intentions” to be pursued by young fledging students of science.
Do you not think the physics can have been geometrically entertained differently? You use analog models to push perspective?
New mathematics will not sign any death. 🙂
Benni’s comment was deleted because it was repetitive, and showed no signs of either understanding or responding to the many answers I had given to his earlier comments. The only reason the comment section on my blog still manages to attract some intelligent discussion is that I spend a lot of time deleting highly repetitive comments from people like Benni, Nigel and a host of others.
Once you start deleting comments from your blog, you need to have a clear statement at the top of your comments section that indicates which types of comments are likely to be deleted. Otherwise you will be accused of censorship (as Peter Woit now clearly is). Interestingly, it is Woit himself who has problems with the arXiv. Is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?
woit wrote:
Benni’s comment was deleted because it was repetitive
it was the first time, I pointed out that you should write a review article.
Before, I sugested, that you might write something which critisises the landscape by showing that there exist some predictions which aren’t antrophic. As Polchinski did also, I gave you examples with papers that make scientifically critics of the landscape (If I am so silly, why does Polchinski suggest the same?).
You denied this, claiming that this cannot be done because the arguments of these papers would be weak. The suggestion to write a review article about “why the arguments are weak” I postet only for one time. And you censored it. This sugesstion to write a review of the weak status of current string litherature wasn’t repetitive.
Also, why don’t you have it considered earlier to write a review about “100 weak papers in stringtheory”? A serious researcher who has some serious critisism would be able to do this without any suggestion.
That you are not able to do so can be only due to an inability and it might be the good and well chosen reason why you are banned from the scientific database arxiv.org until “a radically change of your publication rate” (Distler) takes place.