tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26325744.post3801498395336267808..comments2023-11-05T03:23:39.028-08:00Comments on Angry Physics: Hiring String TheoristsAngryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15464835370517136806noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26325744.post-21234878316689941932006-10-09T04:57:00.000-07:002006-10-09T04:57:00.000-07:00My experience is that in competition for jobs (eit...My experience is that in competition for jobs (either posdoc or faculty) in formal particle theory, single-author PRL publications on non-string topics count for nothing when weighed against regular string papers with senior influential co-authors. <br />Of course, it could just be that my papers were crap and the PRL referees failed in their jobs, but i prefer to see it as string-dominance in action...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26325744.post-22180669393861492552006-10-07T13:35:00.000-07:002006-10-07T13:35:00.000-07:00Very well said. You left a couple schools out whic...Very well said. You left a couple schools out which, as far as I can tell, are very string dominated. But then the issue isn't about whether phenomena folks aren't getting hired. And I was waiting for Bousso's name to come up. He's a good example of someone with good ideas. I do wonder if his contributions had happened to be a bit more removed from string theory , all else being equal, if he would have been as pursued.Angryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15464835370517136806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26325744.post-58738285475143895932006-10-07T11:47:00.000-07:002006-10-07T11:47:00.000-07:00Also, even within quantum gravity there are people...Also, even within quantum gravity there are people who are not really string theorists, or at least not purely so, but who coexist peacefully with the string community. The tradition of understanding aspects of QG from studying things like black holes, which goes back to Bekenstein and Hawking, continues. Someone like Bousso works in string theory at times but is mostly doing more abstract work on holography and other general properties of QG. Recently Arkani-Hamed has been approaching some of these issues from a perspective informed by, but outside of, string theory. Tom Banks also seems to have a tendentious, but not hostile, relationship with the mainstream string community. People like Linde and Vilenkin are doing old-style quantum cosmology as often as they are doing actual string theory. It's simply not true that the community is opposed to alternative approaches to foundational issues. It is true that the community is mostly opposed to <i>Smolin's</i> views, not because they're alternatives, but because they don't seem tenable.<br /><br />For whatever it's worth, I'm a phenomenologist observing these QG debates from the sidelines, not a string theorist. Not that I'll break anonymity to prove it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26325744.post-76069827533687809952006-10-07T11:28:00.000-07:002006-10-07T11:28:00.000-07:00"At any given school, how diverse is their high en..."At any given school, how diverse is their high energy group?<br />How many school have phenomenologists, particle theorists, and string theorists in the same group? And would they really intrude upon what the vaunted string theory people wanted?"<br /><br />OK, let's look at actual breakdowns in some schools instead of having a vague abstract discussion. I'll try to count active researchers on the faculty, tenured or not.<br /><br />Harvard: Strominger, Vafa, Motl (strings); Arkani-Hamed, Randall (phenomenologists)<br /><br />Stanford/SLAC: Kachru, Kallosh, Linde, Shenker, Silverstein, Susskind (strings); Dimopoulos, Wacker, Peskin, Brodsky, Dixon, Hewett, Rizzo (pheno.)<br /><br />Berkeley: Aganagic, Bousso, Ganor, Horava (strings); Hall, Murayama, Nomura, Gaillard, Suzuki (particle)<br /><br />Chicago: Harvey, Kutasov, Martinec, Sethi (strings); Rosner, Wagner (pheno.)<br /><br />Princeton: Gubser, Klebanov, Polyakov, Verlinde, Nappi (strings); Wang (pheno.)<br /><br />Cornell: Tye (strings); Csaki, Perelstein (pheno.)<br /><br />So there are several undoubtedly fairly good schools; none of them is completely dominated by strings or by phenomenology. Princeton comes closest to being completely string-dominated, but they <i>just hired</i> a collider phenomenologist, Lian-Tao Wang, so they must not be <i>completely</i> devoted to hiring more of their own. Chicago is also a very string-focused institution but rumor has it they might be hiring another phenomenologist. Large departments like Stanford and Berkeley, which have associated labs, have the best balance.<br /><br />I think for some period in the 90s there might have been a real sociological problem that string theory was dominating hiring in HEP theory. Now this is not true; the LHC has helped push groups in the direction of hiring phenomenologists.<br /><br />Personally, if string theory were keeping good phenomenologists, whose work actually relates to current experiments, from getting jobs, I would be very upset. But it's hard to get worked up about it keeping a handful of loop quantum gravity people, whose work has no demonstrable relation to anything in the real world, from getting jobs.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26325744.post-6654598793559410532006-10-07T10:39:00.000-07:002006-10-07T10:39:00.000-07:00Anonymous: Sure, "high energy theorists" was too b...<b>Anonymous</b>: Sure, "high energy theorists" was too broad a term, but I couldn't come up with something better. I think "quantum gravity folks" is a bit on the narrow side. So my point should have been a bit more qualified.<br /><br />I'm saying that string theory dominates not solely because its ideas are better than something else. To some extent, it <em>is</em> self-perpetuating. We can argue about to what extent, but any absolute claims to the contrary would seem extraordinarily hard to support.<br /><br />String theory groups get the opportunity to hire and I think it fairly unlikely that the rest of the department would have much to say in terms of whether they self-perpetuate or not. As diverse as high energy theory might be, at any given school, I don't think there's much diversity in terms of hiring. At any given school, how diverse is their high energy group?<br />How many school have phenomenologists, particle theorists, and string theorists in the same group? And would they really intrude upon what the vaunted string theory people wanted? Despite all this hooplah of Woit and Smolin and others, those practicing string theory are held in somewhat of awe because of the mathematical complexity and high "barrier to entry" in the field. I'm pretty skeptical that there really is such a mixture of opinion.<br /><br />And finally, let me reiterate Doug's point, that is that this self-perpetuation is not at all restricted to string theory. In any field in which I have any experience, hires are somewhat "incestuous" among groups of researchers over-and-above merit alone.<br /><br />Let the string theorists argue with others about the merits of string theory, but some of what I'm reading seems to be of the "my [waste] don't stink" variety.Angryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15464835370517136806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26325744.post-41906518460062750852006-10-07T10:01:00.000-07:002006-10-07T10:01:00.000-07:00"And when the great preponderance of theoretical h..."And when the great preponderance of theoretical high-energy physicists are string types..."<br /><br />But, they're <i>not</i>. Theoretical high-energy physicists are a mix of lots of string theorists, lots of beyond-the-Standard-Model model-building types, collider phenomenologists, flavor (e.g. neutrino or B) physicists, the occasional lattice QCD person, etc. The bulk of people in the field can be categorized as either "string theorist" or "particle theorist," and the numbers are probably roughly 50/50. Then there's a sort of ambiguous fuzzy overlap with cosmology and astrophysics types.<br /><br />Anyway, the point is that hiring decisions and funding decisions are made based on the opinions of a mixture of <i>all</i> of these people, who typically have very different priorities.<br /><br />This whole debate seems to be framed around a false dichotomy. Theoretical high-energy physics is a fairly diverse community. If you narrow the scope to people doing quantum gravity, yes, they're almost all string theorists. But that's mostly because the ideas of people like Lee just <i>don't make sense</i> to most people in the field.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26325744.post-49767533069793535272006-10-06T12:40:00.000-07:002006-10-06T12:40:00.000-07:00Doug,
I agree. All fields are, to some extent, se...Doug,<br /><br />I agree. All fields are, to some extent, self-perpetuating. So it's really not clear to me why Sean would say what he has. As for whether string theory is worse than others, I very much think so, but I'm not trying to attack string theory. I believe it is a worthwhile endeavor. However, I think Lee (and Peter) make good points, and some of Sean's criticism is overly "uncynical."Angryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15464835370517136806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26325744.post-65674384190878467332006-10-06T08:09:00.000-07:002006-10-06T08:09:00.000-07:00I think the point is that all disciplines in peer-...I think the point is that <b>all</b> disciplines in peer-reviewed science are, by their nature, self-perpetuating to some degree. If the majority of the community decides that an area is interesting, then funding goes into that area. Continued progress means continued support, until eventually that area becomes "mature" and is replaced by a new trendy topic. The interesting question is whether this has reached some suffocating limit in the case of string theory. Imagine in condensed matter if essentially the only people who could get funded via peer review or taken seriously in the hiring process were, say, people who worked on high Tc (as an example of a 20 year old problem where progress has been made but a general solution is far from agreed upon).Douglas Natelsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13340091255404229559noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26325744.post-32608078099090036422006-10-06T05:10:00.000-07:002006-10-06T05:10:00.000-07:00Only string theorists makes biased decisions? the ...Only string theorists makes biased decisions? the rest of physicists is perfectly right in his decisions?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26325744.post-53664773469608523152006-10-05T19:11:00.000-07:002006-10-05T19:11:00.000-07:00Google Spreadsheets is nice but if you want to try...Google Spreadsheets is nice but if you want to try something more powerful, I recommend you to try out <a href="http://www.editgrid.com">EditGrid</a>, which is another free web spreadsheet with chart and better functionalities.cliffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15700064447975688272noreply@blogger.com