{"id":14529,"date":"2014-01-14T03:00:24","date_gmt":"2014-01-14T08:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=14529"},"modified":"2014-01-14T03:00:24","modified_gmt":"2014-01-14T08:00:24","slug":"the-hard-is-what-makes-it-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/14529","title":{"rendered":"The Hard is What Makes it Great"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/galileospendulum.org\/2014\/01\/10\/new-theories-are-hard-to-get-right-but-thats-ok\/\">New theories are hard to get right\u2026but that\u2019s OK<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Theoretical physics is hard.<\/p>\n<p>Or more to the point: coming up with workable new theories in physics is difficult. Partly that\u2019s because of the vast successes of science: we are remarkably good with our current theories at describing, predicting, and otherwise characterizing a huge number of physical phenomena. Any new theory has to cover known phenomena adequately <em>and<\/em> do better at characterizing experimental or observational evidence than existing successful models. That\u2019s hard to do, which is why big shifts in the way we do things \u2014 relativity, quantum physics, and so forth \u2014 are much rarer than smaller advances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a recurring theme among scientists who have some exposure to the public \u2014 new &#8220;theories&#8221; arrive unbidden all the time, and these days anyone with an idea can start up their own website. I think Matthew nailed the characteristics pretty well \u2014 pretty pictures but no math, intelligent but little formal training, bold general predictions but nothing specific that could be tested, and the complaint that they are being ignored, or worse, censored.<\/p>\n<p>The devil&#8217;s in the details, and these proposals generally lack detail. There&#8217;s also an observation about pop-sci books not giving you enough to actually do science, which people may not recognize. This reminds me of something that I&#8217;ve seen elsewhere (Physics and Physicists, IIRC): pop sci books don&#8217;t teach you science, they teach you <em>about<\/em> science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New theories are hard to get right\u2026but that\u2019s OK Theoretical physics is hard. Or more to the point: coming up with workable new theories in physics is difficult. Partly that\u2019s because of the vast successes of science: we are remarkably &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/14529\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}