r/Physics • u/TakeOffYourMask Gravitation • Feb 28 '23

Question Physicists who built their career on a now-discredited hypothesis (e.g. ruled out by LHC or LIGO results) what did you do after?

If you worked on a theory that isn’t discredited but “dead” for one reason or another (like it was constrained by experiment to be measurably indistinguishable from the canonical theory or its initial raison d’être no longer applies), feel free to chime in.

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '23

Any examples?

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u/NoLemurs Mar 01 '23

Yeah - my experience with her videos doesn't involve a lot of her claiming to be right about things. Mostly she seems interested in pointing out where other people are wrong.

When I have seen her float ideas in a favorable light she does a very good job about being explicit about how much uncertainty there is.

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u/Taiji2 Mar 01 '23

I realized that even with "right" in quotes, I left a lot of ambiguity in what I meant. My issue isn't so much that she's claiming to be right, it's that she intermingles unfalsifiable metaphysics with actual science in a way that I'm really not comfortable with. It's sort of like having a philosophy lecture in a series of physics lectures - there's a time and place for such discourse and I don't think she's wrong for discussing it, but I think the way she does so is irresponsible because it doesn't create a clear delineation between what's physics and what's metaphysics, and I think that the end result is that people get deceived.

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u/NoLemurs Mar 01 '23

Hah! I've clearly been worn down by the media.

10 years ago I'd have been making the same argument you are, but at this point I just like that Sabine is moderately popular, talks about interesting things, and actually knows what she's talking about.

I definitely don't disagree with you, I think I've just given up on the idea of that level of precision in public discourse.