The Story of Energy, or How To Write Garbage

[ZapperZ]

Honestly, garbage such as this should not be associated with Scientific American.

This is probably a blog article written in the SciAm domain. How SciAm could allow someone like this to write something of this "caliber" is beyond me, and it calls into question on the level and standard that they maintain there.

This person is attempting to write the "history" of energy and maybe even elementary particles. But she tripped all over the place, either getting it really wrong (thinking the beta decay had an issue with charge conservation that required the neutrino), or that cosmic rays are only the result of atmospheric decay, or later on getting into the pseudo-scientific world of metaphysics. You are welcome to use your physics knowledge and find out how many errors she made here, or where she just went way too far (strong interaction and dark energy, anyone?).

The problem with this is that, for people who simply did a web search, they can't tell if this is a formal SciAm article, or if this was simply an "opinion blog" of some freelance writer SciAm caters to. All they see his the SciAm tag, and they will put a lot of weight on such an article. SciAm should be embarrassed to be associated with such garbage. Some of the purported "opinions" in this article are factually wrong!

And oh, this is only "Part 1" of this treatise. I wonder what's in store for us in Part 2 of this gem!

Zz.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Google her - the titles alone of her other works are scary.

 

[Astronuc]

Ugh!

 

[OmCheeto]

It hurts my brain.

The atom is singular in its reduction to itself, in that it does not contain or uphold the metaphysical.

I suppose this means I am illiterate, as I have not a clue what that means.
Removing the fluff, it looks like it is saying; "The atom does not uphold the metaphysical".
Does anything uphold the metaphysical?

I repeat, this hurts my brain.

 

[4568131947]

The quality of journalism is on the decline due to... Technology.

 

[WannabeNewton]

She's a humanities student? Lmfao why is she writing science articles.

 

[256bits]

At the very least, she does give credit to caveman's contibution to science,

Also if you are interested in some prehistory of the developments of interpretation in quantum mechanics...

 

[lisab]

At the very least, she does give credit to caveman's contibution to science,

Caveman quantum: "Food occurs in discrete quanta. We call these quanta, 'antelope'."

 

[Curious3141]

I've seen spam with random text that was more coherent - and more enjoyable to read.

 

[cobalt124]

She's a humanities student? Lmfao why is she writing science articles.

You couldn't tell that from how it was written?

 

[phinds]

GADS ... not only is her science knowledge awful, her grammar is even worse.

Really disgusting that Scientific American would allow its name to be associated with such garbage. Oh ... that's what ZapperZ said in the first place.

 

[AlephZero]

Caveman quantum: "Food occurs in discrete quanta. We call these quanta, 'antelope'."

Nah. Everybody knows cavemen ate dinosaurs, not antelopes.

 

[dipole]

Well, who can you address to correct this issue? I don't know anything about scientific America, but instead of complaining about it on physicsforums, which accomplishes nothing, someone who knows the avenues available to bring this to the attention of the editor should do so, and let them force the author to sever whatever association she has with them.