4 ms·

For those of us who don't already know her, can you explain who Dr Becky is and why we should trust her perspective? I can't watch it just yet, but judging from

For those of us who don't already know her, can you explain who Dr Becky is and why we should trust her perspective? I can't watch it just yet, but judging from the thumbnail this feels like just another educational YouTube video, and while I watch more than my fair share of that genre I don't tend to implicitly trust it on complicated scientific topics.

boesboes 3y ago
She has a PhD in astrophysics and is a specialist on blackholes. In her video's such as this one she goes into what the paper claims and then looks at the evidence for and against, based on other research and theory. She knows her stuff and approaches things rationally.
Jleagle 3y ago
Wikipedia: `Rebecca Smethurst, also known as Dr. Becky, is a British astrophysicist, author, and YouTuber who is a junior research fellow at the University of Oxford. She was the recipient of the 2020 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship, awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society, as well as the 2020 Mary Somerville Medal and Prize, awarded by the Institute of Physics. In 2022, she won the Royal Astronomical Society's Winton Award "for research by a post-doctoral fellow in Astronomy whose career has shown the most promising development".`
sapiogram 3y ago
She has a PhD in astrophysics, with her academic work centered around the co-evolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies. As far as I can tell, she's still an active researcher, even though she clearly spends a lot of her time on her Youtube channel.
- weego 3y ago
  AFAIK spreading interest in the field through social media was/is part of her post doc job goals
lupire 3y ago
The YouTube channel doesn't have hard verification, but claims that "Dr Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford." and Wikipedia editors seem to agree, with further references https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becky_Smethurst https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becky_Smethurst The video cites two papers, one for MOND and one against, so you can look up the papers. It's better than the OP article, which ignores the counterarguments against MOND.
GuB-42 3y ago
From her bio, she is a legit astrophysicist, who publishes in peer-reviewed journals. But more important than that, if you want more, you can read the paper her entire video is based on [1] Also be aware that Sabine Hossenfelder, also a popular science YouTuber and published physicist released a video supportive of that paper, even though she was somewhat in favor of MOND before [2]. She even co-authored a paper about it [3] which she presented in a video [4] [1] https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3393 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3393 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4lu9AxRtqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4lu9AxRtqA [3] https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10202 https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10202 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MVl1cSmYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MVl1cSmYE
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  Let’s turn science into commentator sports! That way an already needlessly polarized field full of petty researchers who promote poorly founded theories to the public in order to gain notoriety can continue to completely screw up physics in the public eye, and frankly in academia, too. Looking at you string theory.
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    It's been that way for a long time. Einstein published a paper in support of Bose's statistics for integer-spin particles, explaining that no, that's not an off-by-one error, and now they're called Bose-Einstein statistics.
    - tsunamifury 3y ago
      Yea but YouTube personalities were never appealed to to find validation amount public opinion.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  Such papers only prove that the simplest formula proposed for MOND may be too simple. While it matches well many experimental facts, there also other experimental facts that appear to contradict it. There is an essential difference between a MOND-like theory and a dark matter based theory. For a MOND-like theory one has to choose some mathematical relationship that determines the gravitational forces, given the observed distribution of matter in the Universe. Then one must compute the expected movements and compare them with the observed movements, to verify or falsify the postulated mathematical model. On the other hand, any theory based on dark matter does not have any predictive power or any usefulness. Because the observed movements of the bodies in the Universe cannot be explained by the conventional mathematical model, one adds arbitrarily dark matter wherever it is necessary to remove the discrepancies in the observed movements. When one is free to add dark matter, then all mathematical models for gravitation become equivalent and none can be used to predict what we observe. Unless an alternative method for observing dark matter would be discovered, using it is just an euphemism for avoiding to recognize that the current model of gravitation is not accurate enough.
greggsy 3y ago
She includes references in the description, in case you need to personally double check the content.

boesboes 3y ago

She has a PhD in astrophysics and is a specialist on blackholes. In her video's such as this one she goes into what the paper claims and then looks at the evidence for and against, based on other research and theory. She knows her stuff and approaches things rationally.

Jleagle 3y ago

Wikipedia: `Rebecca Smethurst, also known as Dr. Becky, is a British astrophysicist, author, and YouTuber who is a junior research fellow at the University of Oxford. She was the recipient of the 2020 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship, awarded by the Royal Astronomical Society, as well as the 2020 Mary Somerville Medal and Prize, awarded by the Institute of Physics. In 2022, she won the Royal Astronomical Society's Winton Award "for research by a post-doctoral fellow in Astronomy whose career has shown the most promising development".`

sapiogram 3y ago

She has a PhD in astrophysics, with her academic work centered around the co-evolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies. As far as I can tell, she's still an active researcher, even though she clearly spends a lot of her time on her Youtube channel.

weego 3y ago
AFAIK spreading interest in the field through social media was/is part of her post doc job goals

lupire 3y ago

The YouTube channel doesn't have hard verification, but claims that "Dr Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford." and Wikipedia editors seem to agree, with further references https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becky_Smethurst https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becky_Smethurst The video cites two papers, one for MOND and one against, so you can look up the papers. It's better than the OP article, which ignores the counterarguments against MOND.

GuB-42 3y ago

From her bio, she is a legit astrophysicist, who publishes in peer-reviewed journals. But more important than that, if you want more, you can read the paper her entire video is based on [1] Also be aware that Sabine Hossenfelder, also a popular science YouTuber and published physicist released a video supportive of that paper, even though she was somewhat in favor of MOND before [2]. She even co-authored a paper about it [3] which she presented in a video [4] [1] https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3393 https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3393 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4lu9AxRtqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4lu9AxRtqA [3] https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10202 https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10202 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MVl1cSmYE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7MVl1cSmYE

tsunamifury 3y ago
Let’s turn science into commentator sports! That way an already needlessly polarized field full of petty researchers who promote poorly founded theories to the public in order to gain notoriety can continue to completely screw up physics in the public eye, and frankly in academia, too. Looking at you string theory.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  It's been that way for a long time. Einstein published a paper in support of Bose's statistics for integer-spin particles, explaining that no, that's not an off-by-one error, and now they're called Bose-Einstein statistics.
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    Yea but YouTube personalities were never appealed to to find validation amount public opinion.
adrian_b 3y ago
Such papers only prove that the simplest formula proposed for MOND may be too simple. While it matches well many experimental facts, there also other experimental facts that appear to contradict it. There is an essential difference between a MOND-like theory and a dark matter based theory. For a MOND-like theory one has to choose some mathematical relationship that determines the gravitational forces, given the observed distribution of matter in the Universe. Then one must compute the expected movements and compare them with the observed movements, to verify or falsify the postulated mathematical model. On the other hand, any theory based on dark matter does not have any predictive power or any usefulness. Because the observed movements of the bodies in the Universe cannot be explained by the conventional mathematical model, one adds arbitrarily dark matter wherever it is necessary to remove the discrepancies in the observed movements. When one is free to add dark matter, then all mathematical models for gravitation become equivalent and none can be used to predict what we observe. Unless an alternative method for observing dark matter would be discovered, using it is just an euphemism for avoiding to recognize that the current model of gravitation is not accurate enough.

greggsy 3y ago

She includes references in the description, in case you need to personally double check the content.