4 ms·

Sounds like something that could have been said to dismiss Einstein, the patent office clerk.

• hprotagonist 8y ago
  Einstein published papers. To date, Weinstein has not. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/dear-guardian-youve-been-played/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/... I haven't seen anybody claim Weinstein shouldn't have been invited to give a colloquium at Oxford, and had his claims been less extraordinary, I'm sure nobody would have minded if he gave some preliminary details without a paper. They're more informal affairs, these colloquia; they should be about exciting new ideas. But given his grandiose claims, it would have been wise to have provided physicists with the gory details beforehand so they could better assess the merits and target their questions accordingly. That's how science advances. Combine that with an ill-advised major media splash -- well, that's a recipe for a PR trainwreck, which is precisely what happened. For my part, I've been especially struck by how careful every single physicist I've seen comment on this publicly has been to correct this misperception that the physics community is unwilling to listen to radical new ideas from outside some kind of elistist "Inner Circle." Again, it's an appealing narrative; that's why this particular framing was used, to cut off any immediate objections at the knees. No doubt there are some hidebound traditionalists lurking in the Ivory Tower, but there are far more dynamic, passionately engaged physicists excited about any new revolutionary ideas that could set physics on an exciting new course -- regardless of where they come from.