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I remember having a total "WTF?!?" moment when I heard Turok, of all people, had been chosen as Perimeter's new director. At the time, Perimeter's reputation wa

by T-A 10y ago

I remember having a total "WTF?!?" moment when I heard Turok, of all people, had been chosen as Perimeter's new director. At the time, Perimeter's reputation was not unlike that of SpaceX or Tesla - a daring, unconventional outfit trying to shake things up with a new approach, and unusually enough endowed with the resources to actually do it. "Things" being very much quantum gravity. Then, out of the blue, Turok parachutes in, a hum-drum theoretical cosmologist who built his career on straightforward computer simulations of classical field-theoretic toy models, quite unrelated to quantum gravity. What?!? If he can say he didn't want the institute "to be center for alternative physicists", it is because the people who put him in place decided they didn't want that. But that was very much the origin story of the place. I still wonder what really happened. Maybe Lazaridis (an engineer, not a physicist) finally realized how far we are from any kind of experimental test of quantum gravity and decided that he wanted some kind of tangible return on his investment. Howard Burton, the founding director who was replaced by Turok, wrote a book [1] about the early years which may shed some light on events [2]. Maybe some day I'll read it. [1] https://www.amazon.ca/First-Principles-Business-Serious-Science/dp/1554701759/157-8685500-0664562 https://www.amazon.ca/First-Principles-Business-Serious-Scie... [2] http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=1805/ http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=1805/

selimthegrim 10y ago
Turok worked with Steinhardt on those ekpyrotic models, which at least have something to say in principle about CMB polarization and gravity waves and could be linked to the BICEP results sorta (which ended up being a no verdict). Does her model even do that? Edit: made my statement less sloppy
- T-A 10y ago
  In HN terms, that's like calling a proposal for a new foundation of computing - spintronics, say - an "app", comparing it to some random social network, pointing out that the latter has really nice support for sharing cat pictures, and asking whether the proposed "app" even does that.
  - selimthegrim 10y ago
    OK then I'll provide a citation [1] that's not just me "bloviating". Enlighten me then, why else is Turok considered more credible if his career is solely built as you say? I agree in some sense with what you're saying, it trivializes these things, but how are you supposed to get people to work together at these institutes if they all go off in orthogonal directions and there's no hope of even a hint of experimental confirmation? It would be like the situation in high Tc in the early 90s all over again, the sectarianism she is accusing people like Turok of. My point was about tying it to experiment, not "does her model have something to say about gravity waves and CMB polarization too" [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150130-joint-dust-analysis-deflates-big-bang-signal/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150130-joint-dust-analysis-...
    - T-A 10y ago
      The point I was trying to get across is that your question compares atoms and oranges. The problem of quantum gravity, which the Perimeter Institute was originally set up to tackle, is as foundational theoretical work as you get. Yet Another Cosmological Model is not. The latter is several layers of "less foundational" further up. It has nothing to do with quantum gravity. (Neither does the article you linked; I have no idea what you're trying to say with that reference.) You ask "why else is Turok considered more credible". More credible than what? If you mean as an expert on quantum gravity, he is not; AFAIK he has never even worked on the subject. That's the point. His appointment as director signaled a complete change of direction for the Perimeter Institute.
      - selimthegrim 10y ago
        I see your point. What I'm saying is that I guess people's appetite for funding foundational research doesn't mean work on stuff that other people never use, even in funding proposals. My point was that he was apparently hired for some "gravitas" (more credible as a "scientific leader") because at least people on other big projects can footnote his name in their proposals and say maybe our stuff will test some of his stuff. (The article was intended to explain that point about Turok) If she had developed other lines of work so that people would scratch her back.....if you're looking at it from a faculty hiring point of view you're usually going to favor the person who "plays nice with others". Hans Bethe saved Ken Wilson's bacon at Cornell for years, until Wilson got the Nobel Prize. Peter Higgs almost got fired at Edinburgh. Gell-Mann protected John Schwarz at Caltech, etc, etc. She had no political cover.

by T-A 10y ago

selimthegrim 10y ago

Turok worked with Steinhardt on those ekpyrotic models, which at least have something to say in principle about CMB polarization and gravity waves and could be linked to the BICEP results sorta (which ended up being a no verdict). Does her model even do that? Edit: made my statement less sloppy

T-A 10y ago
In HN terms, that's like calling a proposal for a new foundation of computing - spintronics, say - an "app", comparing it to some random social network, pointing out that the latter has really nice support for sharing cat pictures, and asking whether the proposed "app" even does that.
- selimthegrim 10y ago
  OK then I'll provide a citation [1] that's not just me "bloviating". Enlighten me then, why else is Turok considered more credible if his career is solely built as you say? I agree in some sense with what you're saying, it trivializes these things, but how are you supposed to get people to work together at these institutes if they all go off in orthogonal directions and there's no hope of even a hint of experimental confirmation? It would be like the situation in high Tc in the early 90s all over again, the sectarianism she is accusing people like Turok of. My point was about tying it to experiment, not "does her model have something to say about gravity waves and CMB polarization too" [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150130-joint-dust-analysis-deflates-big-bang-signal/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150130-joint-dust-analysis-...
  - T-A 10y ago
    The point I was trying to get across is that your question compares atoms and oranges. The problem of quantum gravity, which the Perimeter Institute was originally set up to tackle, is as foundational theoretical work as you get. Yet Another Cosmological Model is not. The latter is several layers of "less foundational" further up. It has nothing to do with quantum gravity. (Neither does the article you linked; I have no idea what you're trying to say with that reference.) You ask "why else is Turok considered more credible". More credible than what? If you mean as an expert on quantum gravity, he is not; AFAIK he has never even worked on the subject. That's the point. His appointment as director signaled a complete change of direction for the Perimeter Institute.
    - selimthegrim 10y ago
      I see your point. What I'm saying is that I guess people's appetite for funding foundational research doesn't mean work on stuff that other people never use, even in funding proposals. My point was that he was apparently hired for some "gravitas" (more credible as a "scientific leader") because at least people on other big projects can footnote his name in their proposals and say maybe our stuff will test some of his stuff. (The article was intended to explain that point about Turok) If she had developed other lines of work so that people would scratch her back.....if you're looking at it from a faculty hiring point of view you're usually going to favor the person who "plays nice with others". Hans Bethe saved Ken Wilson's bacon at Cornell for years, until Wilson got the Nobel Prize. Peter Higgs almost got fired at Edinburgh. Gell-Mann protected John Schwarz at Caltech, etc, etc. She had no political cover.