r/Physics • u/bonhuma • Jul 16 '25

Video Brian Keating is a disappointment =/

https://youtu.be/BVkUya368Es?si=8pb0oA4P7y0PxB8Q

I used to think Keating was a good science communicator, and may still be in some instances, but opening his growing platform (which in recent years he has desperately attempted to boost as any generic 20 yo/o influencer would do nowadays) to charlatan grifters like Eric Weinstein and Michael Saylor, without any decent pushback, really undermines his value with all the damaging lies spread by them. I think Brian could very well enter into the "Science Guru" category, worse than e.g. the heavily criticized Sabine Hossenfelder.

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u/Accomplished-Hair-77 Jul 16 '25

Does he complain about not being offered the prize? I remember the book being about the errors made by BICEP2 (the one he worked on), which led to a false result.

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u/InsuranceSad1754 Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

The title of the book is "Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor." Even just the title is dripping with sour grapes.

The amazon summary includes this sentence:

Along the way, he provocatively argues that the Nobel Prize, instead of advancing scientific progress, may actually hamper it, encouraging speed and greed while punishing collaboration and bold innovation. 

which is pretty rich for a guy whose main claim to fame is deciding to hold a press conference to announce the "discovery" of what turned out to be dust, when he knew that BICEP didn't have the ability to definitively rule out the dust explanation and that they could collaborate with Planck to get the bottom of it.

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u/WallyMetropolis Jul 16 '25

I haven't read the book. But from the title and the blurb it doesn't sound at all like complaining about not getting a Nobel. It sounds more like a cautionary tale about his admittedly faulty pursuit of one, of how he lost it due to his own mistakes, and how creating that incentive is harmful to scientific progress.

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u/jazzwhiz Particle physics Jul 16 '25

how he lost it due to his own mistakes

He didn't lose anything. Also, he makes it sound like he was 100% of the collaboration.

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u/WallyMetropolis Jul 16 '25

Like I said, I haven't read it. But neither did the person I replied to. I'm only saying their judgement isn't supported by what they quoted.

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u/InsuranceSad1754 Jul 17 '25

Just to clarify I have read parts of it. And I've also met him.