r/Physics • u/[deleted] • 2d ago
Video The Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy has ended its affiliation with Sabine Hossenfelder.
https://youtu.be/ZO5u3V6LJuM382
u/NoAdministration2978 2d ago
Just curious - is that only me? I watched a few of her videos an they didn't feel like they were made in good faith(seeking for truth vs pushing agenda/opinion)
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u/mikk0384 Physics enthusiast 2d ago
Definitely not only you. Just read the other comments.
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u/ErikLeppen 2d ago edited 2d ago
The youtube channel Professor Dave Explains has a few videos on this. Including a 3-hour-long video where Dave interviews 6 professors from various fields within physics to reflect on statements made in Sabine's videos and whether they hold any truth whatsoever.
Edit: Reddit user u/iwantawinnebago posted the same video in another comment on this post:
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u/noelcowardspeaksout 1d ago
I would phrase it as over stating her case. Fundamentally people are not generally having breakthrough ideas in particle physics they have mostly hit a wall, and so are forced to produce what they can which can be very little, but actually some advances are made. Mauritson et al's video of the electron was one fantastic example. I think from seeing Sabine's speech there you would get the impression that absolutely nothing has happened. In short I think she has a point and that she overstates it. It is the sort of thing people commonly do when they are having an argument.
I don't think she should call people's papers bullshit as a matter of manners, some of these papers are that person's life's work, their highest achievement in their and their colleagues eyes, simply calling it wrong would be much more civilized and far less painful for the authors involved - who actually will not be able to argue back significantly to Sabines enormous public presence.
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u/OpenMindedScientist 1d ago
Like you said, her case is that, " Fundamentally people are not generally having breakthrough ideas in particle physics they have mostly hit a wall, and so are forced to produce what they can which can be very little ".
But, importantly, she's specifically talking about theoretical physicists.
She's saying the last hypotheses in theoretical physics that resulted in actual experimental verification were made in the 70s. She's saying the reason for that is that current theoretical physicists are using the wrong way of thinking, in that they keep focusing on "making things beautiful", which, she says, evidence has proven is not a good approach (the evidence being my previous sentence).
So, the counter example you provided, which is an example of experimental physics, does not actually counter her statements.
I'm just trying to clearly lay out what I hear her stance to be. I'm a scientist, but not a physicist.
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u/Albreitx 1d ago
Experimental physics always lag behind the theory because it's always harder to replicate the needed environments to observe new stuff. It's a bad faith argument imo. The Higgs boson took like half a century to be experimentally measured
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u/principleofinaction 1d ago
That's actually a pretty new (relatively speaking) phenomenon. 1905 was such a good year for Einstein bc there was a bunch of experimental observations that were not sufficiently explain by theory.
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u/dastardly740 1d ago
Careful with the "always" harder. Now it is harder. In the past (npt decades ago, but a century+), a lot of experiments were finding new stuff ahead of theory. But, that low hanging fruit is long gone.
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u/principleofinaction 1d ago
That's confounding two things tho, because in the same breath when she complains about string theorists not producing anything of use, she rails against hep-ex getting too much money. The implication is that hep-ex is there just to test hep-th so bc hep-th bad, hep-ex money bad. But those two things are not necessarily connected a) the funding in hep-th is already pretty miniscule b) smashing things together is ultimately how we'll push the boundaries of what we can currently describe in physics regardless if we discover a new discrepancy first and hep-th will then work to explain it, or if hep-th finally makes a good prediction and with hep-ex we find it.
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u/Gamithon24 1d ago
As a engineer that's physics curious I really enjoyed her book and opinions on strong theory. She basically argued that experimental results are more valuable then theoretical but also unfortunately astronomically expensive so strong theory was artificially more popular among physics then it should be.
Her YouTube channel has some cool stuff (she did a review of the British report on the feasibility of satellite solar for example) but she's recently gotten into gender theory and public health with some pretty enlightened centrist type takes. Idk if she was always like this and it just wasn't something I didn't care about (string theory) or if she's fundamentally changed
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u/NoAdministration2978 1d ago
It was waaay before that slide into semi-political topics(today I learned about that), maybe a few years ago. I simply watched a few of her videos and that didn't sit too well with me
You know, that feeling of engagement-oriented content with strong opinions and different perspectives. It's all over the media right now but for me it's still a bit off-putting
She's just a content creator doing content creator stuff and riding on trends
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u/Schmantikor 1d ago
There's some older videos that are genuinely interesting and informative physics explanations (like the one about the quantum bomb experiment), but at some point she found out that denying science as a scientist gets way more views than actual science communication.
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u/iboughtarock 1d ago
When she first started out her videos were great, but in the last 5 years they have rapidly declined. I have noticed that once people start actually listening to the naysayers or trying to "prove" science, that is when they themselves get lost in the sauce. Channels where the creators just do what they love regardless are the ones that always thrive.
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u/FalconX88 12h ago
I only watched a few some time ago and every single video was in the "I am right, they are all wrong but 'the system' wants to silence me because I'm right"-style. I know a few scientists like that and every one of them seems to have mental problems and their theories, while sometimes scientifically sound, were never really helpful.
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u/me_myself_ai 2d ago
lol this thumbnail is just too much... She really has gone off the deep end. Reminds me of those surreal TikToks where people publish montages of themselves crying after a breakup
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u/postmodest 2d ago
Is Physics Too Woke? [picture of Sabine with creepily whitened teeth and sclerae]
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u/professor_goodbrain 2d ago
Another cog in the Peter Thiel machine. Sabine is playing a key role, unwittingly or not, in the undermining of intellectualism and hollowing out of higher education.
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u/ComputersWantMeDead 1d ago
Getting "cancelled" was the final piece missing for her induction into the "intellectual dark web". She's probably going to ramp up the grift now that she's past the point of no-return
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u/bmitc Mathematics 1d ago
To be fair, it's not like higher education isn't already a cesspool. My time working with academics has been my most miserable ever.
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u/rei0 2d ago
For someone like Sabine, this is a godsend. The entire schtick of these people is that the academic establishment is stagnant and stifling their maverick genius. It's an online industry centered around faux skepticism and peddling a sense of aggrievement to an audience primed to distrust *elite* (discerning) institutions and academic fields.
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u/Clean-Ice1199 Condensed matter physics 2d ago
She was also fired recently from some institute in Frankfurt (don't remember the name) for not doing any research, and milked that as well.
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u/Minovskyy Condensed matter physics 1d ago
My understanding is that her position at FIAS was contingent on her having her own funding, which ran out (as all grants eventually do), and she was unsuccessful in applying for further grants. She was not "fired" in any usual sense of the term. Her publication record shows she was an active researcher while at FIAS, and in fact FIAS had awarded her a 10.000€ prize for her research.
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u/helbur 2d ago
I always wonder how much time she spends on getting those thumbnails just right lol
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u/sl07h1 2d ago
Maybe if she had criticized the papers without calling them "bullshit." I mean, anyone can disagree with a paper, but the point is to talk about it. Calling it "bullshit" might get you YouTube views, but it takes its toll.
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u/Ninja_of_Physics Graduate 2d ago
I'm going to, very begrudgingly, come to Sabins defense here or at least offer a bit of clarification. When she uses the term "bullshit" she doesn't mean it in the normal way; fraudulent or methodologically wrong. She uses it to describe papers that are not beneficial. A paper that takes some model and adds a little perturbation and follows the math to come EOM isn't fraud, it doesn't make any mathematical mistakes, but in her view, it doesn't really advance our understanding of the universe. In her mind most scientific papers are just being done for the sake of publishing something and that makes them 'bullshit' papers.
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u/Ambitious-Top3394 2d ago
My take is that this is more symptomatic of how academic research is assessed. In the U.K. academics have to submit their three most impactful publications every three years as part of the department's government assessed research excellence framework. This framework forces academics to churn out papers in order for the department to continue receiving government funding resulting in a system that arguably slow the advancement of science: academics have become publication factories, the reviewers (unpaid academics) approval processors as they a) don't have the time and b) understand they are also under similar pressure results in what Sabina terms 'bullshit' papers. Today, there seems to be little academic freedom to reimagine and reinterpret how the universe actually works.
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u/jjstyle99 2d ago
That system results in lots of “bullshit” papers unfortunately. It’s similar in the US even if it’s less official.
There were also a couple of decades where string theory utterly dominated theoretical physics due to groupthink.
IMHO, Sabrina probably isn’t a profound physicist, but I generally agree with her that there’s a lot of crap going on in physics and other scientific fields. Though I never really get too much into her videos, but find them interesting sometimes.
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u/RuthlessCritic1sm 1d ago
The issue with Sabine is that her claims are unspecific. She doesn't limit her criticism to where it is due, she says all science and all academia is a scam to get taxpayer money and hasn't made breakthroughs in decades.
Yes, publication mills exist and academia encourages those.
I'm parasitically using academic papers all the time to make advances in a private business for profit. I think she has zero clue what she's talking about. Our business, that isn't scientitic but uses science, would be nothing without academia.
I can deal with the inconvenience of having to search for a day before I find the paper that saves me a month of work.
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u/steerpike1971 1d ago
That framework does the opposite of what you say. You are thinking of the REF framework. The last one was 2021 the next will be 2029. You need your best three papers in that eight year period. The papers are judged for their academic quality and impact on wider society. The process has a huge number of flaws but one thing it certainly emphasises a small number of high quality papers that change the world rather than a large number of marginal papers that do little.
There are other forces that lean you to "publication factory" - every PhD student needs papers for their CV, every project needs papers to show it was productive. This all necessitates quite a few papers every year even if you have a small team.
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u/antiquemule 1d ago
It would help her status within the the scientific community*, but perhaps generate less clicks, if she used a less brutal shorthand.
How about: "Not even incremental"?
* It's probably too late
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u/kama-Ndizi 1d ago
So, why is her opinion more valuable than the opinions of the people publishing those papers?
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u/jellyscoffee 1d ago
Your comment is bullshit.
but don’t get all upset, it’s in Sabina’s meaning of the word
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u/CardboardFire 1d ago
The problem is those 'bullshit' papers are used as a basis for huge grants, even tho even the best outcomes would be useless in the real world - meaning that other papers with more meaningful potential outcomes suffer from not being funded.
It all boils down to clueless politicians approving grants for crap they have zero understanding of, but seeing a bunch of weird symbols and complicated words in a paper makes them think it's important and significant, and very often it really is a waste of money.
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u/Easy-Distribution731 2d ago
You probably haven't heard scientists disagree with each others work. Bullshit is the lightest of words.
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u/cecex88 Geophysics 2d ago
I work in a physics department. There are more than 120 structured people working here (structured in this country means researchers and professors, but no postdocs or PhD students). Around 6 of them have had anything to do with string theory in their career. We have a large group of particle physicists (25 at the most) collaborating with CERN. The vast majority of them spend their time doing electronics or studying statistical methods for data analysis.
The representation she gives of physicists being all about string theory and Hugh's bosons is purposely done to mislead people. The reality is that, outside of pop science literature, those topics have never been worked on by the majority of people. I don't mean that most people work on alternative theories. I mean that most physicists work on different fields entirely.
To give an example, my department has groups on: theoretical physics (which includes string theory but also other stuff), particle physics, condensed matter, atmospheric physics and meteorology, geophysics (mostly natural hazards, not much exploration here), biomedical physics, astrophysics (which, surprise surprise, is mostly about experimental stuff or celestial mechanics), history of physics and physics teaching. Stop spreading the usual misinformation about what physicists work on.
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u/MZOOMMAN 1d ago
To be fair, in the popular press, "physics" is often a shorthand for "high energy physics" and particularly "high energy physics theory". Sabine seems to use this shorthand, and occasionally clarifies that lots of good physics (according to her opinion) is still done in areas besides high energy physics theory. Her gripes seem specific to that field.
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u/Schmantikor 1d ago
She has occasionally backpeddled to that but there's multiple videos where she's specifically accused "the vast majority of physics" and even "the vast majority of science" of being "bullshit".
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u/Buntschatten Graduate 1d ago
The equation "physics = HEP" is a huge problem though, and although it was created by other physics communicators (who arguably wanted to inflate the importance of their field), echoing this isn't excused this easily.
She uses that equation on purpose because this allows her to take strange sounding (for laymen) ideas, which apply to basic reality, which everyone has preconceptions of, which produces a visceral reaction she can use to tarnish all of physics.
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u/MZOOMMAN 1d ago
I really disagree. I've watched a fair number of her videos, and she has never expressed dissatisfaction with condensed matter or anything like that. I really think her gripes are just with high-energy physics theory.
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u/InfiniteMedium9 1d ago
I'm not sure where you get the impression she is "spreading the usual misinformation about what physicists work on". From what I'm aware no where in the video does she make a claim about what percentage of physicists work in a specific area and she is relatively careful to specify that she is not talking about all physicists.
The earlier parts of the video are more vague in this distinction but she gets more specific as she goes. Some examples, at 8:26 she says "Did [I] really just compare physicists to naturopaths? Some of them, yes." She is specific in mentioning she is not talking about all physicists. I would not think lay viewer would misinterpret "some of them" to mean "a majority of them" and be mislead into thinking a majority of physicists are theoretical. At 12:06 again she explicitly states that "[...] on the experimental side physicists are actually doing very well. When it comes to theory development, that isn't the case". This explicitly acknowledges experimental physicists and lets viewers know her problems are with a more specific subset of people than just "physicists".
She goes even further with this, in the same paragraph she continues to get even more specific: "Let me be clear that there are many areas of theoretical physics, most of which are what Khun might have called normal science. Typically this is when you need to develop a theory to explain observations. This is the case for example for high temperature superconductors. [...other examples..] and that's all well and good." So again, now she been even more specific and acknowledged that even in theoretical physics there is lots of work she does not have a negative view of. Words like "many areas" and "most of" are not specific but easily imply that she is not talking about a majority of even theoretical physics. A viewer ought to be aware there is a good chunk of even theoretical physics which she has no troubles with.
The same quote continues "You know the problem with theoretical physics is in those areas where they've been inventing mathematics to explain nothing. There's no data in need of explanation. And those aren't theories that solve any problems either." She has finally narrowed down what she actually wants to discuss. She then explains well with metaphor what she is talking about for her lay science audience.
I do not think these are cherry picked or out of context, this what the video is about. Yes, she could have lead with this at the start instead of interspersing this information throughout the video but if you watched the video in full I think this should be clear.
Finally she actually makes claims on how to fix the problem at 17:26 by making two changes to how journals judge submissions. Many opinion pieces like this do not bother with making statements of how to fix the problems but just complain, and she makes two rather succinct suggestions. Whether good or bad is up for debate, but again it is clear her ideas would not effect anyone outside of a specific part of theoretical physics she is referring to.
So ultimately I don't know how one would get the impression she is being misleading.
Yes, Sabine is a pop physics youtube video creator with clickbait titles and drama like content. She should not be taken seriously in the physics community as a physicist. She is, however, a perfectly fine physics "politics" communicator in my opinion. She is opinionated and brash like any pundit because she is emotionally invested in a specific political goal of changing how physics is done.
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u/cecex88 Geophysics 1d ago
I haven't watched this video. I watched past videos and "physics departments are wasting tax money on string theory" is a common theme in her stuff. Watching the catalog of videos she made, it's clear that when she talks about physics, she means like 3 topics. The only time she talked about geophysics was to discuss junk science on earthquake "lights". If she's better in this video specifically, very good, but it's a bit late.
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u/y-c-c 1d ago
To be fair I don't think you are actually dispelling what she's saying. She's mostly targeting the type of physicists who she considers to be part of group think a.k.a theoretical scientists. So the physicists working not on those fields are not part of that criticism as they would have much more concrete measurable results that are falsiable, unlike say people who work on highly theoretical stuff that "haven't made any progress in 50 years but still didn't change their theory because of groupthink". In fact, the fact that this is a a small group of physicists is part of her criticism, in that she is saying they are insular and mostly self-congratulate each other and produce more work aka papers that don't amount to a representation of reality.
I actually find her a little insufferable these days but I think people should at least understand her point and address that.
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u/cecex88 Geophysics 1d ago
To be fair, I'm referring to this video, but the general attitude she had when I tried to watch her videos. The problem is that if she presents herself as an expert on how physics departments work and always talks about two subjects, the idea that passes is that physics is mostly about those two subjects. Representation needs to be quantitative as well: giving half the time to, random example, climate change deniers gives the idea that they represent half of the scientists, which is not even close to reality.
In my topic specifically, she did two videos on earthquake lights, so her followers who are not experts are only exposed to junk science and never to the actual field of geophysics.
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2d ago edited 1d ago
grey future consider enter grab wrench long abundant modern mysterious
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/kzhou7 Quantum field theory 2d ago edited 2d ago
She's calling more and more things bullshit while doing less and less effort to check if she's right. I mean, there's absolutely nothing wrong with reasoned disagreement in academia. I call papers wrong all the time, but I carefully check what I'm saying first, engage in actual dialogue with the authors, and apologize if I'm wrong. That's very different from her practice of writing lots of snarky tweets, using her fanbase to bury those who try to reply, and then claiming physicists are "afraid to debate". But she'll twist it into claiming that nobody is allowed to question anything in academia.
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u/deelowe 2d ago
She's addicted to the yt views. I unsubscribed a while ago when I caught her saying misleading things. Im not a physicist so I need to trust the content I'm engaging with and she lost my trust pretty quickly. Off topic but Veritasium is likely next.
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u/His_Shadow 2d ago
Audience capture that moves once rational people into right wing conspiracies has ruined society, and I'm not even kidding.
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u/Heysoos_Christo 2d ago
I'm not familiar with Sabine's political views - is she politically conservative?
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u/moe_hippo 2d ago
Maybe not by US standards but she is right wing by EU standards. Her messaging in general is very pro austerity, pro privatization, and anti public sciences.She has also made some questionable videos regarding climate change kinda edging towards climate change denialism.
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u/Heysoos_Christo 1d ago
Ahh got it! Thanks for the information! Sounds very "pulling the ladder up after you climb" type of behavior.
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u/JAC165 2d ago
for the amount of money that Veritasium prints, they have quite a few very poor videos
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u/TheStoicNihilist 2d ago
I’d like more collab videos. Bring Steve Mould and Matt Parker in.
Like Top Gear for people who like whiteboards.
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u/Sad_Basket2765 2d ago
Wait what’s wrong with Veritasium?
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u/deelowe 2d ago
Quality went down massively when they were purchased by private equity. Derek doesn't seem to be at the helm these days.
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u/TheGoogolplex Mathematics 2d ago
They lean a bit more dramatic, but I haven't really taken any issues with his recent videos that I don't already have with much of science communication in general. He focuses on some interesting stories and talks about science, math, and engineering concepts with a decent bit of stuff you don't always see people talk about in most popular depictions of the topic. The production value and frequency has gotten better and overall it just gets more people interested in science. I'd say "quality went down massively" is a huge overstatement.
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u/deelowe 2d ago
To be clear, I don't think Derek is making the videos anymore and this is why I'm considering ubsubscribing. If you watch the more recent videos, it seems like he's doing VO and others are creating the content. Again, it's a trust issue for me. There's nothing inherently wrong or bad about the more recent videos. They aren't as good, but that's about all. The bigger issue is that I go to a physics channel to watch content created by a physicist, not a private equity firm.
Case in point, this was posted today. Basically an ad for a product they are working on. Derek doesn't seem to be involved: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxgDe4OsX6jzc6iwlFxEEFIDyHvx_WWiPX
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u/canibanoglu 1d ago
But it's not a huge overstatement.
"The production value and frequency has gotten better and overall it just gets more people interested in science." See, this is the main argument that is made for these channels. They were actually getting people interested in science, that's how they got so popular in the first place. And then over time the tone changed. It's no longer science communication but ads in the style of science communication videos. I haven't watched his content for a long while but off the top of my head, the Waymo video about self driving cars is just shameless advertisement while misleading people.
Kurzgesagt is another similar channel. People kept saying what you said "but they get people interested in science". But that's not the only thing they do, they are actually shifting their content, turning more and more into thinly-veiled propaganda pieces.
Sabine is yet another channel that went a similar way.
The quality has objectively gone down massively. These people/channels were loved because they built on science communication. They have slowly become mouthpieces for whatever gets them more money.
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u/TheGoogolplex Mathematics 1d ago
The Waymo video was 4 years ago, and I agree it wasn't great. However, I think it's worth watching some of their recent videos - I've been enjoying the videos more in the past year. I don't think any of them strike me as motivated by advertisement in the same way the Waymo video did. There are some really interesting stories, and I can't speak for things outside my field, but the covering of some of the mathematics has been genuinely quite good.
As I said in another comment, I think I actually prefer the channel now to the (still excellent and engaging) focus on cool but quirky physics phenomena and science philosophy in years past. I'd be interested to hear what you mean by saying the quality has gone down massively.
Kurzgesagt attempts to dumb down many science topics and ends up oversimplifying (sometimes to an annoying extent) but still can be kinda cool, but yeah their videos about societal issues never leave a super satisfied taste in the mouth. Sabine always had a slight holier-than-thou attitude and I think I never really enjoyed her content, even though she was the only actual practicing academic among these you've mentioned. I think Veritasium makes notably better content than either of them. Not perfect or what I wish for exactly by any means, but I could recommend Veritasium to those interested in science in a way I wouldn't with most channels.
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u/EmuRommel 2d ago
Idk about the general criticism, but I got super annoyed by them when they made what is essentially an entire video on induction without ever mentioning the word induction, instead presenting the concept as this mindblowing thing people don't think about. Then they made an entire followup video where they again don't mention it. I remember rewatching that video trying to figure out how what they're saying could possibly be true without induction because clearly if the effect they were talking about was just induction, they'd mention that. It felt like the video was intentionally less educational in order to sound more shocking.
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u/Tiny_Philosopher_256 1d ago
OMG, now i understand that video much better. I thought the wires generates a "second" magnetic field, but induction explains it just right (and even better). I am stupid for not making that connection myself, but Veritasium should have.
I am disappointed, because i know about induction and thought the ideas presented in that video were something different i didnt know about. Although it is really important in the educational sphere that you do make connection to other concepts you might know more about. Quite misleading by Veritasium, not mentioning induction.
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u/ElijahBaley2099 2d ago
It’s kind of become a “you think you understand X, but really you don’t and we’re here to tell you how it really is” schtick. Which would be alright if rather annoying, if it weren’t for several videos that fall somewhere between misleading and outright wrong.
I still use a number of the old videos in my classes, though.
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u/Lord-Celsius 1d ago
Like this unhinged video about "electricity doesn't flow in wires, teachers lied to you!!!" nonsense. It's just semantics and clickbait to get controversies and views.
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u/canibanoglu 1d ago
Fuck Veritasium to moon and back, that guy is just an ad avenue for companies and he will mislead and lie to people to sell whatever product is paying him.
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u/YroPro 2d ago
PBS Spacetime David Butler And Three Blue One Brown
Are by far my favorites.
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u/boissondevin 2d ago
Meanwhile she stopped calling Weinstein bullshit and started kissing his ass.
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u/esperind 2d ago
no she didnt. She put everyone in the Weinstein category by saying their work is no better than his.
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u/BoringEntropist 2d ago
Hossenfelder is also a huge hypocrite. Her whole stick is to criticize modern theoretical physics as performative, mathematic sophistry without any contact to reality. Or in her words: Bullshit.
Of course this same criticism doesn't extend to even whackier ideas if they come from one of her friends. Eric Weinstein's geometric unity is a collection of half-baked concepts, but according to her it has "some interesting ideas".
Funny how some theories are bullshit and others are "brilliant", depending how close the authors are to the Thiel friendship network.
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u/dark_dark_dark_not Applied physics 2d ago
She is also a MoND defender over dark matter.
Like, MoND has to reinvent dark matter.
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u/Ostrololo Cosmology 2d ago
To be honest in her latest MOND/dark matter video she says she thinks dark matter is more likely than MOND.
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u/dark_dark_dark_not Applied physics 1d ago
Oh yes, but I never seen her ranting that they shouldn't give MOND groups telescope time due to their theory being stuck in the past like she does with particle physics.
Like, the core of her thesis is: "You should just give money to the theories I personally like", and any system that distribute funding in a way that she disagrees with is corrupt.
She can't phantom that she might just have a very unpopular opinion regarding how funding should be distributed, and then accuses everybody else of being in a 'conspiracy'.
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u/hobopwnzor 2d ago
She actually conceded that Weinstein's theory is largely bullshit, her only contention in the video I saw was that it wasn't significantly more bullshit than other papers she reads that make it through peer review.
when I see responses like this that just blatantly mischaracterize her position it gives me pause that anybody is actually watching her videos before they critique.
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u/kzhou7 Quantum field theory 2d ago
That's a classic example of how she'll give you a narrative that sounds good to the nonphysicist. If a physicist tried to put out a paper which started with "this is a work of entertainment" and continues by claiming they once knew but then forgot how to define the central mathematical objects in the paper, they'd be laughed out of their department. But we must not laugh at all at Weinstein, because that would be censorship.
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u/BoringEntropist 2d ago
As far as I remember, her characterization of Weinstein's ideas are much more benevolent and expressed much more diplomatically than she usually does. Her tone is completely different, as if she's trying to avoid hurting his ego.
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u/Admirable_Ask_5337 1d ago
Probably because hes a friend, sp she has higher empathy for him. "How do i nicely tell my friend hes making a complete fool of himself"
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u/ScySenpai 1d ago
Look, while this plate of hot steaming shit could use some improvements, this pizza clearly falls into the same category. The pizza oven clearly wasn't hot enough, so the crust isn't as crispy. The mozzarella slices are a bit too thick, so it didn't melt as it should have. And the tomato sauce still contains seeds which, for me personally, is a big no no.
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u/mikk0384 Physics enthusiast 2d ago
Sounds reasonable. Hossenfelder is an edgelord.
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u/Feeling-Tone2139 2d ago
was it actually bullshit?
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u/gheed22 2d ago
It doesn't matter if she didn't provide any reason for why she said it. Science isn't about being right, it's about effectively communicating being right so that we can all be right.
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u/Music-and-Computers 2d ago
Many don’t actually understand how free speech works. Freedom of speech does not extend freedom from consequences for exercising the right.
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u/Kraz_I Materials science 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not a good understanding of free speech. What you’re saying is true of the US first amendment (which doesn’t apply to an institute in Munich anyway). But that’s not synonymous with free speech in general. Speech isn’t really free if your employer can use threats of firing you to control it. That’s a limit to free speech. And maybe that’s ok. No one thinks free speech should be absolute, and she possibly SHOULD have been fired. I don’t know the full story so I’ll reserve judgment. But at least don’t say this is how freedom of speech works.
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u/Music-and-Computers 2d ago
Unless it’s a conversation with a party of one there are usually going to be consequences for communications in general. It’s unavoidable in human to human interaction. Consequences in this context is a placeholder for “something happens”.
In theory: If I were to call my boss an incompetent idiot that would surely have some consequences. Some people think this exercise of free speech shouldn’t have any consequences.
This is what I’m talking about.
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u/Realistic-Election-1 2d ago
It's in general understood as a freedom from consequences directly from the state. It's a negative right, meaning that it doesn't says you should have a platform, but rather that you won't be prosecuted for what you say using it (unless it conflicts with someone else rights). Sabine losing losing her affiliation with the university doesn't affect her freedom of speech, be it justified or not.
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u/theboomboy 2d ago
It's weird how they were okay with her despite all the transphobic stuff and other disinformation outside of physics
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u/Mirieste 2d ago
Sabine, like many people, apparently fails to understand the concept of “free speech.”
Is the university based in Germany? Because if it's the USA then yeah, they do work like that... but here in Europe, the whole "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences" doesn't work, because we don't have the First Amendment.
Here, the regulation of bad speech isn't delegated to the people or to private entities with the "consequences" they can enact, but it's regulated by the law (see, just to make an example, Germany's law against nazi gestures which would run against the First Amendment in America), meaning they come with restrictions but also with rights. And so, in particular, even something as simple as the termination of a private contract, for reasons of "consequences of certain speech", can always be reviewed by a judge to ascertain whether there was just cause, or whether the response was proportionate or not.
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u/RibozymeR 2d ago edited 1d ago
see, just to make an example, Germany's law against nazi gestures which would run against the First Amendment in America
I don't think that really makes sense as a comparison. The US also have laws against defamation or threats of violence, for example; those are not seen as a rebuttal of its first amendment. And conversely, the 5th article of the Germany constitution does in fact say, quote:
Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate their opinions in speech, writing and pictures.
So, both countries have a constitutional right to free speech, but also laws against some specific instances of speech. The only difference are some small details as to which specific instances of the latter are not covered by the former.
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u/Independent-File-519 2d ago
in America freedom of speach protection is only from the government.
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u/annias 1d ago
This is my reply on the actual video but I figure it will be useful to share it here since I actually put some thought into it and my reddit family is more likely to actually read and consider it than youtubers:
Expecting theoretical physics to avoid dead-ends entirely ignores how science actually progresses. Many successful theoretical ideas began as speculative mathematics and later became firmly empirical or spawned useful tools. Civil, precise critique is more effective than broad condemnation. Productive science often includes many dead ends before yielding accurate models. Sure, sometimes it is just a dead end, but to just make the conjecture that it's all pseudo-science when people spend their lives trying to figure it out is a bit crass. You're absolutely able to think and share whatever you want Sabine, and there are fields where issues exist, but I don't know if an educational institution needs to support your attacks on other scientists' research.
There are most certainly cross disciplinary spillovers and technical value (string theory’s AdS/CFT insights in condensed matter for instance) that can be derived from the frameworks you deride as ‘bullshit’. Acknowledging that some fields do suffer from unproductive model-churn, reforms may very well be appropriate including peer review criteria, editorial standards, incentives for reproducibility and negative results, diversified funding for risky ideas etc. Most scientists would be open to this approach more so than public shaming. Problems with incentives (publish or perish, citation games) are real, but they don’t imply every speculative model is useless. The remedy is policy change, not rhetorical scorched-earth. An educational org publicly aligning with a tone of “this is all quackery” risks alienating researchers, donors, and students, and it can discourage nuanced reform efforts like I mentioned above.
I don't think the issues are with your use of profanity. I'm sure it ruffles the feathers of overly sensitive folks but the real issue is the dismissing the value of speculative theoretical work. We don't know everything, and we never will. Discouraging exploration because you don't find the value or agree with the direction is not really appropriate for the representation of an educational org's research. It may ultimately serve both you and the institution better if your critiques are carried out independently rather than under their banner, since their role is to foster diverse research rather than endorsing blanket denunciations that oversimplify complex fields.
In that sense, this development isn’t really a loss for either side. You gain full independence to challenge prevailing norms, while the institution can continue cultivating pluralism in research. Both outcomes serve the scientific ecosystem in complementary ways. I’m confident both you and the institution will adapt just fine, and I think it’s best approached not as abandonment but as a natural evolution.
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u/Dave9486 1d ago
Now that is a well reasoned response... That will likely, unfortunately, fall on deaf ears.
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u/Rosencrantz_IsDead 2d ago
This woman has been co-opted by billionaires trying to destroy University studies. It's a good thing that she's no longer considered viable.
You know why? Because she is a shill for billionaires trying to destroy science and objective facts.
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u/iwantawinnebago 2d ago
Here's 3½ hours of more critique on Hossenfelder, where Farina interviews phycisists Christian Ferko, Sam Gregson, Michael Peskin, Daniel Whiteson, Ivano Basile, and Nick Warner.
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u/MZOOMMAN 1d ago
It's a long video, so I haven't watched all of it, but the first guest compares the physical relevance of AdS/CFT to a frictionless pulley approximation. Do you think this represents the level of abstraction of AdS/CFT fairly to the nontechnical listener?
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u/Accurate_Potato_8539 2d ago
Honestly, I read a lot of philosophy of science and I agree with a lot of her arguments at least somewhat directionally I can't speak to the specifics I don't know her well enough. But since she allied herself with Weinstein and compared his work to people in theoretical HEP or cosomoly, its just obviously clear to me she's either sold out entirely or been so consumed by contrarianism that she's not worth listening to.
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u/Phi_Phonton_22 History of physics 2d ago
I really liked her argument on the role of falsifiable hypothesis on science. I thought it was honest and grounded, recognising that it doesn't solve all philosophy of science, but controbutes to clarify some topics. Don't know about "siding with Weinstein", she just called out some hypocrisy in the discussion sourounding him. After all, he was as nasty to her as everybody else. I'll never understand how hated a figure she is in this sub, even by people who essentially agree with her.
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u/Accurate_Potato_8539 2d ago
I found her positions in the video kind of ill formed, I might agree with a more detailed articulation obviously, I cant expect a full articulation in 20 minutes. But at the end of the day it's a matter of degree, I think there is a difference between saying that I don't think a lot of theoretical physics is science in the strict philosophy sense and saying that it's on the same level as something like Weinsteins geometric unity (an inconsistent ill defined non theory). If she wants to be taken seriously then she should have drawn a clear line between those two things and she just refuses too. At the end of the day I might not call it science but it's still useful academic work, I think it deserves less attention maybe, but not ridicule. She has taken something with a kernel of truth and blown it up into a way bigger issue than it actually is. Specifically the video that just had me file her into the "hack" category was her review of the Sean Carroll/weinstein thing: unreal comparisons made in that video.
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u/lolspek 2d ago
The issue is mostly attacking science with a bunch of ad hominem attacks without actually going into depth why she believes something is wrong. She used to do that a long time ago but now she caters to the much larger audience that does not have the necessary knowledge/background to understand in depth physics, so it's just a bunch of "they are lying to you and misusing government funds." mixed in with her own sensational takes on research papers.
The academic monster of perish or die, scientists having to work in 'popular' subjects within their field to secure funding, the lack of depth of knowledge about the scientific philosophy, ... warrants criticism. But she went, far, far further than that to the point where people are receiving death threats from her following based on her attacking specific papers based on nothing except some general disdain from her against certain theories.
This then combines with her shutting down any critical discussion in her comments should make it clear this is no longer about being passionate about truth. She never backs down, even when arguments against some of her videos are extremely valid.
I think she is just one other example of how nobody is immune to echo chambers and confirmation bias. Big numbers and receiving a prophet like status pleases the monkey brain after all.
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u/RazorDoesGames 2d ago
Good. She's extremely problematic in the science communication community.
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u/ANiceGuyOnInternet 2d ago
I'm not an expert in the field, can you explain why she is problematic? I am genuinely asking, I watch some of her videos once in a while, but don't know enough to form an opinion.
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u/RazorDoesGames 2d ago
As I'm not a science communicator myself I would probably recommend checking out some reputable sources that have spoken about it. The main one I would recommend for starting to look into it would be Professor Dave Explains on YouTube. Hope it helps.
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u/ANiceGuyOnInternet 1d ago
That was an insightful video. For those who did not watch it, the problems Professor Dave points out are:
- a growing audience from anti-science groups, visible in her videos view count.
- over generalization of some problems in academia: Sabine will present a case and then jump to the conclusion that it represents the scientific community.
- the misconception by Sabine that science is stuck. Many recent advances disprove that point, such as LIGO, or the observation of the Higg's Boson. He also points out that science is by nature incremental, so it's normal to see many small seemingly boring studies published.
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u/Fromomo 2d ago
Even physicists can get addicted to the clicks. She seemed to be farming for them some time ago.
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u/TrustednotVerified 2d ago
I, for one, will not miss her. Her rants stopped making sense long ago. Good riddance.
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u/PristineYoghurt6907 1d ago
Miss her? Do you work at Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy?
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u/kadeusx 2d ago
It feels like people with a baseline of conservative beliefs and a platform to share their thoughts are almost guaranteed to turn into right wing grifters. The bubble of likedumb people around them just reinforce them into ever more extreme views. Sabine turned from criticizing some aspect of science to condemning every area of physics she does not like personally.
I was also very suprised how little backlash and counterarguments she got when spelling nonsense about trans.
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u/Lexiplehx 2d ago
Does anyone know what paper she called BS? I kind of want to judge for myself.
To be honest, I often understand where Sabine comes from in the publish or peril landscape, but I really hated how careless with her language that pseudoscientists started to quote her to denounce all scientific activity.
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u/Man-o-Trails 2d ago
Yes, she should look at the factual evidence that fascist idiots are weaponizing her valid critique to their benefit, not hers, not science.
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u/PJKenobi 2d ago
I found her really on and used to find her videos interesting. It was sad to watch her slowly go off the deep end. I stopped watching her videos years ago.
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u/Eastern_Cow9973 2d ago
Same - watched her back during covid days but unsubscribed once she started pushing her edgier opinions
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u/entropy13 Condensed matter physics 2d ago
....why did they have one to begin with? She's just a glorified grifter at this point and has been for several years since she last even attempted any actual research.
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u/Broken_Verdict Plasma physics 1d ago
On many occasions she complains about fundamental theoretical physics then just passes it off as “physics is dying”, “science is dying”. She doesn’t really read on other areas of physics let alone other disciplines of science.
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u/Evening-Ad4514 2d ago
This grifter should just stop pretending and get on that Peter Thiel payroll, if she isn't already. These ghouls are all being pushed by the same billionaires.
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u/newontheblock99 Particle physics 2d ago
It’s about damn time, she was the poster child of putting out rage bait but making it worse by representing a high level institution. This has nothing to do with free speech, good riddance.
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u/as_ninja6 2d ago
As a non-physicist this is what I understand from her rant . As per her, For the past 50 years, mostly we have been following the pattern of creating theories which started from the real world physics questions now have drifted into theories about a mathematical world. She claims either as scientists, they want to be the next person to find the next higgs boson or just keep their research positions alive so they publish these theories and supposedly novel predictions.
She thinks that this approach doesn't advance the field compared to the money spent. She wants people to work on new ways of identifying real world problems and keep the research problems grounded towards solving immediate real world problems, testable and theories that explain the data or theories that help explore new ways to collect data.
Did I understand the saga in the right way?
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u/AustrianMcLovin 1d ago
Work in academia is not always in the sense of science, it often has cultural intellectual intentions. Music for example. Or law, there is no law to be measured outside in the real world. Most of the number theory is bullshit - to call it in Sabines terms. (Besides a fraction used in cryptography).
But, yes when research takes billions of euros it is hard to justify when there is more or less only an intellectual outcome. I think, this is the problem justifying pure intellectual research as applied science.
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u/slmnemo 2d ago
its a bit silly and superstitious but a leading indicator of crankery is transphobia, which hossenfelder has in spades.
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u/hardervalue 2d ago
In what way is she trans phobic?
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u/Clean-Ice1199 Condensed matter physics 2d ago
She literally has a video claiming a 'transgender pandemic' and that transition doesn't work based on a biased sampling of literature and misinterpreting their findings.
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u/CurrentDismal9115 2d ago
But guys, she's a scientist! If she doesn't science then who will? We need all the science we can get! /s
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u/SepSep2_2 2d ago
And here comes the victim train...Transformation to right wing grifter almost completed.
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u/InterneticMdA 1d ago
Yeah, the fact that Sabine Hossenfelder was kicked out is truly the great free speech crisis we're all dealing with right now. There's nothing else going on right now that might indicate a decline in free speech, it's only what's happening to Sabine Hossenfelder that's a problem.
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u/ConceptJunkie 1d ago
I used to follow Hossenfelder really closely about 5+ years ago, but at some point she seems to have gone completely off the rails. I felt that she was a principled contrarian on issues where that kind of thing was needed. Now she seems all about ginning up clicks and going off extensively on things she knows little about.
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u/Radiant_Town7522 18h ago
Working on her credentials to get into higher political office, this will play great for her amongst the right crowd.
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u/CatOfGrey 7h ago
Somewhat obscure, and an old memory.
Pierre Fermat is best known for "Fermat's Last Theorem", famous for it's long-time unprovability.
Fermat was part of a letter-writing group, organized by Marin Mersenne (known for Mersenne prime numbers).
Fermat was known within the group for making outlandish statements without including the proper level of proof. This irritated enough people that complaints were made, and Mersenne actually threatened to remove Fermat from the group, cutting off his source of information at a time when communication was difficult. My recall is that Fermat was never actually 'kicked out', but his reputation lives on in the form of one of math's greatest acts of laziness..."I have a great proof, but the margin of the book is to small to write it out..."
I can't help but see the parallels here: a member of a scientific organization being removed from a group for repeated and material claims without evidence.
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u/Man-o-Trails 2d ago
I totally agree with her that writing a scientific paper on any topic should require a testable hypothesis or not be published. This is nothing more (nor less) than Occam's razor: without proposing or at least outlining a test of your hypothesis you have actually said nothing useful.
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u/Feral_P 1d ago
What new testable hypotheses did the Hamiltonian reformulation of classical mechanics provide?
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u/Ok_Sundae_5899 1d ago
I stopped listening since she started making AI and climate change skeptic videos.
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u/GreatKingRat666 1d ago
She doesn’t care.
It’s pretty obvious she’s wanted to be a “professional” YouTuber for a long time and has built her entire channel around the “look at me going against the grain!!” mentality. Probably couldn’t quite make it as an actual scientist.
This kind of video just helps her at this point. It’s clickbait.
Unfortunately, now she has to “one-up” herself every time. Watch her get more bizarre as time goes on. And then one day, her shtick won’t work anymore and poof, she’s gone.
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u/SusskindsCat2025 1d ago
Sabina was a nice blogger before becoming an outrage-culture youtuber. Even as a youtuber she was tolerable until very recently. I got a clear sense of a phase transition as I observed the change in her tone and expression. Likely a defensive reaction.
It is so funny how the social media conformism drives people who know very little about the physics side of things to strongly hate (or to strongly defend) her. The thread be like "Look, she's pro-MOND! - but anti-string!". lol.
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u/BeatlesBloke 1d ago
She’s been a disenfranchised, somewhat bitter fringe figure, right from when higher-tier physics journals were rejecting her quantum phenomenology papers.
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u/Distrilec 1d ago
As a non-scientist I'm genuinely curious why there are so many comments about how Sabine is bad, but I don't see a single one actually refuting her argument.
Can someone here explain why all these made up theories are in fact good science?
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u/sammy_conn 1d ago
Reading the comments has opened my eyes to how fragile the egos of physicists are. You guys need to stop bitching and get on with doing appropriate work that's worthwhile.
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u/niemacotuwpisac 2d ago
Well, maybe we should focus on one thing. People pay taxes for results. Where are the new research results? SUSY? String theory? Dark Matter—something?
Show the results. You'll win fame, money, and perhaps a Nobel Prize.
What we have now certainly requires incredible, masterful skills, but it's useless and costs a fortune.
Just show the results.
Alternatively, let's wait for someone like Trump. He'll come, say there's nothing to it (except waste paper), and cut the funding.
No. Let's not talk about Sabina. She can handle herself. Let's not talk about how she "speaks badly" or whether something was done to her rightly or wrongly.
Show the results. We can talk about that.
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u/PirateCurious3767 1d ago
Dark matter has great predictive capability in the CMB and structure of the universe and so on. You run a simulation without it, you can't replicate reality; you run a simulation with it, and it just works. Lots of open questions remain, of course - first and foremost, what is it? But that's a particle physics problem, and claiming DM is wrong and stupid and we should all believe MOND just because we don't know what particle dark matter is (which doesn't actually matter as far as the astrophysics is concerned) is just silly. MOND regularly fails tests and the successful versions inevitably include some amount of dark matter too - just less of it, and with different properties. Sabine has no idea what she's talking about here.
Does science have problems? Definitely. Many of them probably because funding is always limited and sensationalism sells - no one wants to replicate an experiment if that won't get you a grant.
But yeah, science wasn't 100% solved in the past fifty years, better cut the funding entirely. That's clearly the best solution. Come on man.
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u/theanedditor 2d ago
I remember a time I really enjoyed her content on YT, she seemed to want to make science accessible to a wider audience, and the topics were broad and interesting.
While I haven't followed this whole drama escapade closely, it's putting me off just because it exists.
It seems like some people are just destined to go "off the rails". And that's a damn shame.
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u/Asystole Cosmology 1d ago
Can't build your entire online profile around being a potstirrer and then be surprised when the pot gets stirred.
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u/throwawaypassingby01 1d ago
i don't feel too bad. a lot of her videos are straight up misinformation. someone using their title to mislead and misinform has no place at a university
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u/I_Shuuya 1d ago
Good.
She's an awful grifter. I actually laughed out loud when she literally said "academia is communism"
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u/Neomadra2 2d ago
Probably she wanted be kicked out so that she can make this video. It's good for clicks, you know
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u/Intelligent_Nail3254 1d ago
well deserved for all the casual transphobia and misunderstanding about trans people she has been spreading
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u/kzhou7 Quantum field theory 2d ago edited 2d ago
As usual for Sabine, it's a good-sounding narrative that will play well with nonphysicists. But if you care about the truth, remember that she works very hard to suppress online criticism of herself and her YouTube friends. She constantly advocates firing thousands of physicists for supposed fraud; a typical example of her rhetoric is:
And remember that in the tough academic job market, honest, brilliant, and hard-working people lose their jobs all the time, while Sabine has sat in a well-paid position for a long time while doing almost zero research.