Causes of loss of interest in String program

[marcus]

Right! The lamp-post is one mechanism providing guidance, or lack thereof. There is no "simple naturally evolving" theory. No theory evolves by itself in absence of humans. A theory is a human artifact that develops in conjunction with a community--"co-evolves." A scientific community is selfselecting and has a structure.
Leadership (and its vision or lack of vision) plays an enormous role.
Admissions committee, hiring committee, funding agencies, advisors, tenure committee, down to the organizers of the annual conference (which showcases the main directions achievements and hot areas.)

Research leadership can go with the lamp-post methodology, to borrow your phrase, or it can decide for some reason that it is best not to go the easy route and encourage some different research focus. I've seen very clear examples of this.

 

[marcus]

We still have the problem of understanding the decline of interest in string research proper (having explicitly to do with strings and branes, and postulated real extra spatial dimensions).

It is my own personal perception that many string theorists may now have decided after 20-25 years of experience that there were some potentially misleading misconceptions in the string program, having to do with strings and branes. My own perception is that many of them may come to the following conclusions:

- That geometric compactification of a higher dimensional theory is NOT a good way to think about the string parameter space.

- That perturbative quantum and supergravity approximations are NOT a good way to understand string theory.

- That strings DO NOT predict susy.

- That there DOES NOT exist a unique underlying theory.

- That things like electron mass should NOT be computable from first principles.

I don't wish to seem to be attributing these statements to anyone else's authority: these are MY conclusions expressed as seems clearest and most transparent to me. I suspect a number of experienced people have quietly drawn these conclusions and that this can itself explain a good bit of the declining interest in string research proper.

 

[marcus]

One of the consequences of this is a kind of renaming. Different things are called "string theory" now: ABJM, twistors, application of AdS/CFT to condensed matter, black holes, various SUSY types of Yang-Mills, supergravity...
There may at times be a rather tenuous connection---something may be 'string-inspired' although not involving extra spatial dimensions, strings, branes directly.

We can try to gauge this shift of interest out of string proper by using DESY keywords "string model" and "brane model" and checking the research output of a sampling of prominent people. It is important to make it clear that these people can be working in related areas that some would consider part of the String program broadly construed. They have just shifted out of string/brane research proper. This doesn't seem to have been made clear enough earlier.

          1995-1998      1999-2002      2003-2006      2007-2010
Witten         38             29              9              5
Strominger     23             14             22              4
Maldacena      27             33             24              9 
Polchinski     21             17             11              4
Harvey,J       16             15              9              2
Duff,M         24             17              8              5
Gibbons,G      17             29             11              2
Dijkgraaf      18             11              9              7
Ooguri         31             18             13              8
Silverstein,E  16             15             16             10
Seiberg,N      19             16             22              1

A sample search:
http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=a+Seiberg, N +and+%28dk+string+model+OR+dk+membrane+model%29+and+date+%3E+1994+and+date+%3C+1999&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= (19)

http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=find+a+Seiberg, N +and+%28dk+string+model+or+dk+membrane+model%29+and+date+%3E+1998+and+date+%3C+2003&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= (16)

http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=find+a+Seiberg, N+and+%28dk+string+model+or+dk+membrane+model%29+and+date+%3E+2002+and+date+%3C+2007&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= (22)

http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?rawcmd=find+a+Seiberg, N+and+%28dk+string+model+or+dk+membrane+model%29+and+date+%3E+2006+and+date+%3C+2011&FORMAT=WWW&SEQUENCE= (1)

 

[marcus]

I think to correct any misunderstanding on the part of readers it is important to note what was said earlier about possible explanations for the decline in citations of recent string papers (primarily by other string theorists):

The question of the number of recent string papers among top cited papers for recent years (which really does seem to have gone down a lot) has many possible explanations to be sorted out, and I believe all of these are actually contributing:

1) The more mature a field is, the more of its breakthrough papers will be older. There is no shortage of string papers among the 2009 cites; just that many of them are not 'recent' (I get about 9 if I don't limit to recent).

2) There actually haven't been many breakthroughs recently, despite continued effort (nothing new of the order of ADS/CFT, dualities, black hole results).

3) Other areas have become 'hot', pushing aside recent string papers (e.g. gear up to LHC and astronomy / cosmology)

4) More active participants, less reliance on superstars, in a field of unchanged significance relative to physics as a whole, will lead to fewer top cited recent papers.

Of these, only (2) is a possible problem for a research program, and only if it continues 'too long', however that might be defined.

Spires top cited articles during odd years 2001-2009
(with number of recent string papers making the top fifty shown in parenthesis)

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2001/annual.shtml (twelve)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2003/annual.shtml (six)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2005/annual.shtml (two)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2007/annual.shtml (one)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/topcites/2009/annual.shtml (one)

A paper is counted as recent here if it appeared in the past five years. Here I think there can be no mistake about which papers are in any sense String. One can look down the top fifty list and easily distinguish. I guess the conclusion is that less current String research papers is making it into the top fifty than used to be the case---for whatever reason.

This marked decline in citations was happening already in 2003-2005, and led any other measurable trend that I have noticed. I don't know if this is in any way meaningful or how to express a possible significance. Citations to string papers come almost entirely from within the String community and reflect the researchers' own evaluation of a paper's interest.

PAllen, your 4 possible explanations for this decline in cites are well thought out and seem quite reasonable, but don't seem to apply to the period 2003-2005. Maybe that does not matter, though. When I think of 2003 what comes to mind in this context is Susskind's paper on the Anthropic String Theory Landscape. It was the year that the Landscape was widely recognized, prompted by the January 2003 paper by KKLT (those Stanford people, Kachru Kallosh Linde Trivedi). I suppose this could be coincidental, or could in some way be related to the drop-off in cites.

 

[Sardano]

I don't understand, Marcus. By reading your posts it is obvious that you hate String Theory, that you worked in LQG or you are very into it or whatever. That you manipulate or do everything that is at your disposal to put String Theory behind LQG. In addition, you try to monopolize this forum by posting a huge quantity of LQG related posts, and threads in which you are the only one posting because they are neither interesting nor relevant!. You are fighting your particular war against String Theory, I presume because you have nothing to add with physical content... It doesn't make any sense to talk with you about String Theory because you will always be manipulating and trying to find the way to demonstrate that String Theory is worse or has less papers or whatever.

I guess you should be very angry with the new Supersymmetry-evidences (http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/04/atlas-memo-4-sigma-diphoton-bump-at.html ) which are going to put LQG and other "obesessed-with-General Relativity-research-like-there-is-nothing-after-General-Relativity-because-it-is-perfect-and-we-cant-correct-it-and-Einstein-was-a-God" in a very marginal position. As it should be.

 

[smoit]

I don't understand, Marcus. By reading your posts it is obvious that you hate String Theory, that you worked in LQG or you are very into it or whatever. That you manipulate or do everything that is at your disposal to put String Theory behind LQG. In addition, you try to monopolize this forum by posting a huge quantity of LQG related posts, and threads in which you are the only one posting because they are neither interesting nor relevant!. You are fighting your particular war against String Theory, I presume because you have nothing to add with physical content... It doesn't make any sense to talk with you about String Theory because you will always be manipulating and trying to find the way to demonstrate that String Theory is worse or has less papers or whatever.

I completely agree with this assessment! This has been going on for years! I suspect that his main target audience would be undergrad/grad students interested in BSM physics, who lack the expertise and judgement to see through the fog he's been creating on this forum, and in this thread in particular. The very title of this thread is so provocative and misleading that one can see immediately that he's got a clear agenda, which the previous posted has so eloquently described. I can't see how one can even have a serious conversation with this marcus guy. All he'll do is copy a phrase from your response that fits his purpose and spins it his way.

 

[cosmik debris]

Marcus is only promoting a theory which he believes is going to give the answers we are all seeking. Sardano you are quoting from Lubos and he is far from objective in his particular (pun alert) viewpoint. They are both just promoting their own pet theories as most people do. You are free to read or not read anything on the interweb and you are free to create your own posts.

 

[marcus]

Thanks Cosmik.
@ Others, I normally don't respond to ad homs.
There are, believe it or not, some factual issues.

 

[tom.stoer]

There's a vicious circle:

First many reseach program like string theory or LQG have serious physical problems (work-in-progress for decades, non-uniqueness, not testable at low energies, ...).

Second some physicists think that discussing these problems weakens the position of the research program; Lubosz is a famous example. That results in supressing discussions and therefore hinders, slows down or even stops progress of science.

Third (and this is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy) unfairly dismissing objective criticism strengthens the position of the critics. Woit and Smolins books are the best examples; they exist simply due to the fact that certain discussions have not taken place. They cause more harm than a prior open discussion would have done.

So in there very end research programs and communities with blind spots are not able to address these blind spots; they remain as a thorn in the flesh; they do not go away simply by ignoring them.

Please have a look at the early decades of quantum mechanics. Almost every position was wrong or inconsistent; nearly every two of positions were contradictory, nearly every correct result was pure luck. But these decades with their substantive discussions were necessary in order to construct the final theory. One reason why we do not make more progress today is that we always insist on the fact that we are right and the other party is wrong and that we do not listen. This is b...sh.. With some distance - as I am not directly involved in string theory nor LQG - I have to state that many discussions (some of them unfortunately here in this forum) are infantile.

Nature is the laughing third - and believe me, nature it is not made of strings or loops; both programs (as of today) are far from being able to provide the ultimate answer. But they have a certain value which could very well rest in their failure rather than in their success.

 

[negru]

Right, however the problem is that Marcus always tries to portray an image of the string program which is completely disjoint from reality.

 

[tom.stoer]

I am not so sure; I think he simply follows and continuously criticizes a way taken by a small minority of string theorists.

 

[marcus]

...Second some physicists think that discussing these problems weakens the position of the research program;... That results in supressing discussions and therefore hinders, slows down or even stops progress of science.

Third (and this is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy) unfairly dismissing objective criticism strengthens the position of the critics. ...

Thanks Tom, excellent points! Emotional ad hom defensiveness is just another symptom.

There is, I think, some factual and useful information in this thread (and related ones) of a sort that our string-friends would do well to heed.

All the defensive noise tends to drown out the information content, so I will try to recall and summarize a few essentials.

 

[marcus]

I think any objective observer realizes that the String program is in a period of difficulty and is in flux. There is, for the time being, no clear direction.

It does not hurt the program to acknowledge this, and try to understand it. We are not playing some "I'm better than you" game of scoring prestige points. A better understanding can actually help.

I would like to understand the reasons. I can't discover them by myself although I have some guesses and suspicions. Some of the discussion in the "real disappointment" has shed unexpected light on underlying physics issues.

 

[atyy]

As we now know from relative locality, marcus is in his own momentum space with respect to "an objective observer of string theory."

 

[marcus]

As we now know from relative locality, marcus is in his own momentum space with respect to "an objective observer of string theory."

Heh heh, by the principle of relative locality, so is each one of us including you, Atyy
ABJM? Anybody for twistors? Anti-deSitter condensed matter?

One trouble seems to be that the mirror in which String looks at itself is broken into many pieces.

String experts have decided after several decades experience that one should NOT think in terms of strings and branes in a geometry with compactified extra dimensions. What is the theory if one discards the central paradigm?

 

[atyy]

Heh heh, by the principle of relative locality, so is each one of us including you, Atyy
ABJM? Anybody for twistors? Anti-deSitter condensed matter?

Yeah, but actually I'm searching for relative nonlocality

 

[marcus]

...continuously criticizes a way taken by a small minority of string theorists.

Tom, I'm curious. What is this "way taken by a small minority"?

I realize there is a general trend to abandon compactified extra dimensions, but I don't criticize this. I am actually glad to see it!

Pointing out that the program is troubled is not the same as criticizing some line of theoretical development. I don't criticize trends I see today, like getting away from explicit string/brane models. I welcome several of these visible research trends.

Maybe what you meant by the "minority way" was Anthro Landscape Multivism , but I suspect that is largely dead among the researchers now and is mainly pop-market fodder. I heartily deplore it but don't waste much time criticizing it.

My main concern is not with criticizing individual research gambits (some of which I actually welcome!) but with the fact that the program seems to have lost an overall Gestalt and direction. It needs to find its way.

 

[fzero]

String experts have decided after several decades experience that one should NOT think in terms of strings and branes in a geometry with compactified extra dimensions. What is the theory if one discards the central paradigm?

You keep saying this, but your evidence is scant. With all due respect to surprised, both Haelfix and I have explained several times now how CY compactifications are thought to be universal in the space of critical superstring CFTs. You will find very few string theorists that have "discarded the central paradigm," which is tied to a mathematical construction and particular interpretation of the degrees of freedom that it represents. At the same time, it is no doubt worthwhile to also study different formulations to find other consistent string theories. So far as I can tell from the literature, many of these theories are probably related to CY compactifications, though the connection is not as well established as for standard Gepner models. Many of the ones which are not have physically undesirable properties, such as massless fractionally charged particles.

It may very well be that there is a description of nonperturbative degrees of freedom in which spacetime geometry is less fundamental. This would not invalidate the CY description at scales sufficiently below the string scale, though it might cause us to reassess whether or not there is any physical limit in which extra dimensions are large. If there is no phase of the universe in which they are large, then it probably doesn't make sense to call them true dimensions, but we can still use the techniques of CY geometry where they apply.

 

[marcus]

With all due respect to surprised, both Haelfix and I have explained several times now how CY compactifications are thought to be universal...

Thanks fzero! I think what you are showing me is that it is controversial. Many in the String program (but not all!) have concluded that strings/branes in compactified extraD are the wrong way to go. I can't say which POV is in the majority and maybe that does not matter.

You commented about evidence. Here is some supporting evidence. This is a sample of famous stringsters whose names just happened to occur to me and to PAllen. I didnt look at their papers first before deciding to put them on the list. DESY librarians make a professional classification of papers---they decide which papers to tag "string model" and "membrane model". The indication is that the top people USED to write papers explicitly involving strings/branes and that they do that much less. Not HARD evidence, but a suggestive straw in the wind.

This seems to support what a respected Pro said here earlier about "many" String people. I'll not paraphrase since I might unintentionally err. But I would say this suggests that among the top people there has been a huge shift out of explicitly string/brane research proper. If you want the Spires links, go back to post #63.

          1995-1998      1999-2002      2003-2006      2007-2010
Witten         38             29              9              5
Strominger     23             14             22              4
Maldacena      27             33             24              9 
Polchinski     21             17             11              4
Harvey,J       16             15              9              2
Duff,M         24             17              8              5
Gibbons,G      17             29             11              2
Dijkgraaf      18             11              9              7
Ooguri         31             18             13              8
Silverstein,E  16             15             16             10
Seiberg,N      19             16             22              1

One wants to ask how one characterizes what these people are working on NOW. Is there a coherent form and direction to it? What is the String program about if you ditch parts of the core paradigm?
Or "de-emphasize" if you prefer.

I can't avoid noticing that the big decline happened 2003-2006, which is also when there was a huge drop in overall String-of-any-kind representation in the Spires Top-cite Fifty.

And those sharp drops happened right after the 2003 KKLT paper and Susskind's IMHO panicky reaction to it. There could be no connection but it could be argued that these things that surfaced in 2003 MIGHT have something to do with those changes in research focus and ratings.

 

[fzero]

Thanks fzero! I think what you are showing me is that it is controversial. Many in the String program (but not all!) have concluded that strings/branes in compactified extraD are the wrong way to go. I can't say which POV is in the majority and maybe that does not matter.

This is incorrect. There are a handful of groups studying alternatives and much of the results in this direction are by two separate groups involving Faraggi and collaborators and Schellekens and collaborators. The vast majority of model building papers focus on CY compactifications (the U Penn and Lust groups are representative).

You commented about evidence. Here is some supporting evidence. This is a sample of famous stringsters whose names just happened to occur to me and to PAllen. I didnt look at their papers first before deciding to put them on the list. DESY librarians make a professional classification of papers---they decide which papers to tag "string model" and "membrane model". The indication is that the top people USED to write papers explicitly involving strings/branes and that they do that much less. Not HARD evidence, but a suggestive straw in the wind.

I've tried to explain multiple times why the DESY keywords cannot be completely trusted. In some cases they are correct, in others they are misleading. Since I was looking at recent Lust papers, here's another example: http://www-library.desy.de/cgi-bin/spiface/find/hep/www?eprint=arXiv:1007.5254 . The paper is a model-independent analysis of production of the lightest massive string states in intersecting D-brane models. DESY has chosen not to label it as "string model" or "brane model," though it is certainly objectively within one or both of those classes. There is no substitute for having an expert actually looking at the paper to decide what it is about. As far as I understand the DESY process, this is supposed to be done to some extent, so perhaps the errors are due to a subjective analysis of the best N keywords and others are left off.

In any case, DESY keywords not withstanding, many string theorists are working on topics such as AdS/CFT that are not model building, or otherwise exploring topics in gauge theories that may or may not be string inspired. The best that can really be said without asking these people directly is that they're working on topics which are more interesting and directly productive for them than others. The choice of research topics is often not decided by which are the most important problems, which are usually very difficult, but also by the requirement to publish, both to secure funding and jobs for younger collaborators. Also, most ideas do not survive to be published. Looking at publications does not show you what topics were pursued and abandoned as incorrect or incomplete.

Since most physicists do not publish their thoughts on broad topics not directly related to their technical publications, it isn't possible to rely on paper titles or DESY keywords to tell what they think. As I've mentioned previously, one place in which physicists do lay out their broad beliefs is in grant applications. Most of the NSF funded proposals are a matter of public record, so you could look some of those up and see if there's evidence there that most string theorists have abandoned the possibility that strings might be the correct description of nature. I believe that the vast majority of these grants will include language such as "string theory remains the best candidate for a theory that unifies general relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics," independent of what precise topics are being directly proposed.

 

[fzero]

This seems to support what a respected Pro said here earlier about "many" String people. I'll not paraphrase since I might unintentionally err. But I would say this suggests that among the top people there has been a huge shift out of explicitly string/brane research proper. If you want the Spires links, go back to post #63.

In post #24, I made a detailed analysis of Witten's publications, being very conservative about which papers should be considered string theory. There was no evidence that he had shifted out of string theory.

You are free to quibble over what constitutes string theory proper by using some keywords that are associated to model building papers. In this regard, the vast majority of papers since 1995 are not about string theory proper. Even the string duality papers of 1995 and beyond were not strictly about model building, but were about much more abstract topics.

I'm sure that you would see a similar phenomenon if you were to study lattice gauge theory papers over the last 2 decades. A certain reasonably large fraction might be about explicit calculations of hadronic mass spectra, but an equally large fraction would be about technical details or [STRIKE]unphysical[/STRIKE] nonphenomenological models that still have something to teach us about harder problems.

 

[marcus]

...
I've tried to explain multiple times why the DESY keywords cannot be completely trusted. In some cases they are correct, in others they are misleading...

No indicator is perfect. I see a huge decline and I doubt that there is a conspiracy on the part of the librarians to engineer a systematic misclassification.
This is informal of course---suggestive straws in the wind that can contribute marginally to trends many of us acknowledge.

==quote fzero==
... many string theorists are working on topics such as AdS/CFT that are not model building, or otherwise exploring topics in gauge theories that may or may not be string inspired...
==endquote==
RIGHT! Thanks for acknowledging this!

This is a large part of the point I wanted to make in this thread. There has been a major shift in research activity---sometimes I refer to it as research "interest" but what I'm looking at is objective stuff like citation counts and papers written and what topics get featured at the annual Strings 2010 or 2011. At least quality-wise, in terms of highly cited papers, there has been a decline of activity in core areas of the program.

Naturally one wants to know why. And what the new picture is that is taking shape.

I see that you have offered some reasons for the shift of research attention by "many string theorists". This is just the sort of thing that I was looking for in this thread---hopefully some objective physics reasons, but basically any kind of cause whatever that may have contributed to the observed change.


BTW may I assume you mean the grant requests that people put in for funding? Not the grants themselves but the grant proposals?
==quote==
I believe that the vast majority of these grant [proposals] will include language such as "string theory remains the best candidate for a theory that unifies general relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics," independent of what precise topics are being directly proposed.
==endquote==

 

[fzero]

This is a large part of the point I wanted to make in this thread. There has been a major shift in research activity---sometimes I refer to it as research "interest" but what I'm looking at is objective stuff like citation counts and papers written and what topics get featured at the annual Strings 2010 or 2011. At least quality-wise, in terms of highly cited papers, there has been a decline of activity in core areas of the program.

Naturally one wants to know why. And what the new picture is that is taking shape.

Like I said in my other post, even many papers written from 1995-2000 probably do not fit into the narrow area of string theory proper that you want to apply to recent papers. If you wanted to discuss a couple of papers for comparative purposes, I could probably help. Otherwise it's hard for an expert to objectively say that a particular paper on say heterotic/type II duality is more or less a core string paper than one that examines a new facet of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Neither one is probably telling us that there are three generations of matter or what the electron mass is, but both are probably saying something deep about the core theory anyway.

BTW may I assume you mean the grant requests that people put in for funding? Not the grants themselves but the grant proposals?

Yes, if you go to http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/ you can obtain information about grants awarded. This includes the investigators, the institution, and the abstract included in the grant proposal, among many other sundry details. Full proposals are not distributed (which would contain details of ongoing research that should really be kept confidential for many reasons), but the abstracts are probably still useful for the suggested purpose.

 

[unusualname]

yawn, yet more attacks on marcus and his perfectly reasonable attempts to portray the modern research programs in fundamental physics,

geez, you string guys had your time, we got it, fundamental reality might be 1d oscillating strings, or it might be 0d branes (ie points ala feynman e^i.theta) or it might be higher dimensional branes.

yawn again. maybe you're just partially correct like everybody else, maybe all that oh so friggin difficultly constructed mathematics will fit in , but it's a convoluted way to construct reality.

Just sayin'

 

[smoit]

In post #24, I made a detailed analysis of Witten's publications, being very conservative about which papers should be considered string theory. There was no evidence that he had shifted out of string theory.

It does not matter for him, fzero! He'll keep ignoring this point over and over and over again because it does not fit his agenda. He'll copy and paste a part of your response that he finds useful to promote his propaganda. Marcus has reposted his "data analysis" about 10 times now, while fzero's much more careful estimate is buried in the middle of the thread. This is a classic strategy - "If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth." The end result is that some lay people will be left with impression that there is indeed some decline, not because Marcus is right, but because he's better at repeating the garbage. At the same time, in a different thread, Marcus is promoting an idea that some papers on the theory of angular momentum, computing 12j and 15j symbols, constitute research on LQG . Any well informed person realizes how ridiculous that is but it does not matter.

I will say where I am coming from, regarding these issues. I think Final Theory is a wild goose El Dorado. Physics must be pragmatic and incremental. ...

So any theory of gravity must at least include a positive cosmological constant. Like the classic gravity equation does. I'm happy to be contradicted on this and be given counterarguments, but this is where I am coming from. String program leaders misguide the program if they do not confront this---and maybe they already do and I just didn't hear about it.

They do not confront what? The positive cosmological constant? Have you ever looked at the title of the KKLT paper, which came out in 2003? FYI, it it called "de Sitter vacua in String Theory".

 

[smoit]

As I said before, this whole "discussion" and "data mining" is directed towards the uninformed souls, interested in BSM physics, in an attempt to steer them away from string-oriented research by convincing them that there is some decline in the String program.
Below is the very reason for why this and similar threads with data "confirming" the thread title were started in the first place.

But I'm not convinced of your general statement that anyone interested in QG shoud first study String.
...
If someone is interested in QG they might do well to go to Penn State's Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos and talk to Abhay Ashtekar. They might do well to learn some cosmology and quantum cosmology. And also get some handle on the current and projected job terrain.

Really, Marcus? Is that what it's all about? Seriously, until you change your criteria and follow fzero's suggestion for a more accurate analysis, instead of repeating the garbage, your point is moot. I'm sure that suprised, Haelfix, fzero and other reputable people on this forum see the same thing, they are just a bit more diplomatic in expressing their frustration with what you've been doing here. I'm much more blunt b/c I can't stand the BS you are spreading.

 

[unusualname]

As I said before, this whole "discussion" and "data mining" is directed towards the uninformed souls, interested in BSM physics, in an attempt to steer them away from string-oriented research by convincing them that there is some decline in the String program.
Below is the very reason for why this and similar threads with data "confirming" the thread title were started in the first place.

Really, Marcus? Is that what it's all about? Seriously, until you change your criteria and follow fzero's suggestion for a more accurate analysis, instead of repeating the garbage, your point is moot. I'm sure that suprised, Haelfix, fzero and other reputable people on this forum see the same thing, they are just a bit more diplomatic in expressing their frustration with what you've been doing here. I'm much more blunt b/c I can't stand the BS you are spreading.

You really are a very rude person.

This type of speech will look funny in restropect when the dust settles, you should reign in your vitriol so as not to appear too ridiculous,

 

[smoit]

You really are a very rude person.

This type of speech will look funny in restropect when the dust settles, you should reign in your vitriol so as not to appear too ridiculous,

Thanks for the complement! What really looks ridiculous in retrospect is this quote from 2004 addressed to a student (note the ridiculous hype of LQG in the quote below and contrast this to his tone in this thread):

Hello Tom I hope you had a good summer. You are heartily welcome to read some LQG with me in spare moments as long as you are spending enough time on a well-rounded realworld program.

...

the reason LQG is heating up now is because it gives some indications of approaching that point. It doesn't have to do with being beautiful or divinely inspired. it has to do with the fact that without much fanfare a version of
LQG has, curiously enough, already been falsified. Synchrotron radiation from the Crab Nebula tested and shot down Smolin's Version A of LQG and it looks like Version B will be testable within maybe 4 years.

this is why, if you ever want to know about LQG, you should read
"Invitation to LQG" by smolin. It has almost no formulas--you can probably understand an important 20 or 25 percent of it. It has an FAQ written for
physicists from other fields. And most importantly it describes the
near term experimental situation

this paper is dynamite and it is the one of the very few papers I can imagine wanting to read with you or anyone at PF at this moment
...

from here: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3023815#post3023815"

 

[marcus]

Marcus is promoting an idea that some papers on the theory of angular momentum, computing 12j and 15j symbols, constitute research on LQG . Any well informed person realizes how ridiculous that is but it does not matter.
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Here is the post that you are referring to:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3262991#post3262991

I don't have to "promote" that idea, since it is obvious. One of the authors already has a LQG paper out. Two of the authors have spent time at Marseille with Rovelli's group. Two of the authors will be attending Loops 2011 next month. Several of the papers contain extensive references to LQG research and discuss their relevance to the Loop program.

The fact is that the Wigner 15j is key to 4d spinfoam LQG, just as the 6j was key to Ponzano-Regge 3d gravity. Understanding the asymptotics of the 15j is critical for establishing the large-scale limit of LQG. Large scale means large j---so one needs to understand the limit of the 15j symbol for large j.

The papers in question are explicitly connected with LQG, and as I said, two of the authors will be at this year's Loops conference. So I really don't have to explain why you are wrong. You just need to consult the facts.

 

[atyy]

marcus, as you know, I disagree with your definitions. But I want to find out how strict they are. Let's say LQG goes in the direction of AdS/LQG, would you count that as LQG or not?