Giant resonance mode

[shkrobius]

...In HEP theory [there was] a crossover into a different mode of operation which I will call the giant resonance mode. In this mode each novel idea, once it appears, spreads in an explosive manner in the theoretical community, sucking into itself a majority of active theorists, especially young theorists. Naturally, alternative lines of thought

Comments

[shkrobius]

Often you simply cannot tell which ones of 1000+ experimental observations are correct. People who are doing them do not know what they are doing or how to design experiments aiming to answer a particular question. The sum total does not mold into any story. The more you read, the more confusing it all looks. On the theoretical side, you quickly get 200 models all claiming to explain small subsets of observations, albeit after considerable fudging, and most of these theories are unverifiable by design. It is positively impossible to scrutinize all of them and decide what is known and what is unknown, which line of reasoning is promising and which is not. One needs to forgo all of this and start anew. Try to do that and you will be told you are inventing bicycles. Most of these problems are simply problems that are being addressed well before the time of such problems had arrived. It is like trying to explain superconductivity in 1911

[chaource]

Well, I am also inclined to admit that my points 1 and 2 are consequences rather than causes. Some people think that the causes are the new system of financing science, the system that did not exist before WWII, and whose effects took 40 years to fully take shape. You write that "the problems are being addressed well before their time". Why is it that people prefer to concentrate their attention on such problems rather than on problems whose time has come?

[shkrobius]

Because they are not into this problem for the sake of the problem. Science that is regarded as business has different deliverables.

[i_eron]

But is there any other possible way now? It is difficult to do research in, say, physical chemistry, without lots of expensive modern equipment and without attracting good people that have other alternatives. The increase in competition for grants is inevitable. And investment is distributed by people that by definition understand less than the specialists, hence fashions, buzzwords, artificial excitement and, in some cases, "bubbles" or even "pyramid schemes".

Yes, it looks like physical sciences have benefited from the Cold War and now are riding the inertia from those days, grossly bloated, eating through the old authority in the eyes of the paying public. This cannot last much longer - the positive popular image like of Albert Einstein in the fifties is already impossible today. Probably today's fashions and bubbles will be more short-lived than before. But how a typical research lab will function in a generation from now, I cannot imagine.

[shkrobius]

Many of the experimentalists that use expensive equipment think that, too. But it also happens in branches of biochemistry and chemistry where the expense is mainly in labor and reagents, where such costs are shared, etc. It happens in pure theoretical physics, where such costs are negligible. It is true that lusting for costly equipment helps to sustain the bubble, but it is being blown even where this is not a pressing concern, so the reason should be more systemic. As I wrote, every branch of science developed their own ad hoc rationale for the "giant resonance mode" that looks plausible. Only when you realize how common it is, one begins to understand that these rationales simply cannot be true. It is much harder to put one's finger on the real reason, and that is why I am reluctant to make my diagnosis. I've heard too many already

[i_eron]

I meant physical chemistry as an example, because it illustrates the problem well and because I know a tiny bit about it. But it must be the same in all sciences, more or less. Even a pure theoretician expects a nice salary, international symposia, a room with some book shelves, an access to journals, some paper and lots of quiet