[scottlocklin]

I usually like Collision articles, and agree with the title, but this is a terrible measure for physics.

Horgan's book is a better resource for this sort of thing[0]. Obviously there are many problems with the sociology and incentive systems for physics departments; affirmative action, papers with 1000 "coauthors," infrastructure fees for grants involving giving a grad student a pencil, political witch hunts, difficulties in family formation, herding behavior in subjects, byzantine political games, overcrowded winner take all credit. Frankly you'd have to be kind of a combination masochist moron to want to do it these days outside of the rare person whose career is assured post PhD; masochistic morons probably don't make good scientists.

But nobody talks about the fact that an awful lot of "physics" these days is unfalsifiable piffle. Phenomenology, network theory, cosmology, noodle theory, "quantum computing," black hole physics, neural net fiddlers, nanotechnologists, cosmologists, numskulls babbling about "muh multiverse" and "muh simulation hypothesis" -the world let alone the average physics department has entirely too many of these. Nobody in the physics department can make fun of these cranks for entirely political reasons. And at this point the lunatics outnumber the actual scientists, who, you know, can make predictions that can be checked, rather than generating piffle suited for press releases and late night bong sessions.

[0] https://www.wired.com/1996/06/the-end-of-science/

https://web.archive.org/web/20201004020641/https://blogs.sci...

[troelsSteegin]

I don't understand why affirmative action would be a problem for physics departments. What's the basis of that? As an outsider, I'll say that I see the jobs of a physics department as a) making physics b) making physicists c) teaching physics d) funding making physics. How is affirmative action an "obvious" issue?

[inglor_cz]

"How is affirmative action an "obvious" issue?"

This isn't obvious to me either. While I can see that hiring to match predetermined racial quota can result in subpar performance, most of the world does not play the diversity/inclusion game in the way that USA does, and does not seem to have better results.

[getlawgdon]

It's just more "subtle" dogwhistling on HA. There's nothing wrong with AA in physics because there is still huge underrepresentation in physics.

[ta988]

Why do you put nanotechnology in your list?

[scottlocklin]

Because even a reasonable set of first steps towards creating artificial mechanical life forms made out of arbitrary atoms do not exist and probably never will. Drexler wrote a stupid science fiction book. Good marketing for chemists for a while I guess. Remember the congressional hearings back in 2005 on how nanotech was going to be 15% of US GDP by 2015? I do!

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-109hhrg21950/html/C...