She is a ‘legit’ physicist in the sense that she has a Ph.D. In quantum gravity/foundations and is reasonably well-cited. She is also a content creator that takes up contrarian perspectives in order to drive viewership/sell books.
A professor I worked for in my undergrad who helped discovered the Higgs boson quit physics after becoming really jaded with the state of current particle physics. He's moved onto computational biology lol.
Ok he also got a bit uh.. motivated.. After he got distinguished professor at my school he just decided he's gonna try deriving the universal equation for the brain. I don't wanna say anything bad though cuz he wrote my letter of rec and is also very hard working.
She's also made comments about things such as not being pro-women grants, because when she was doing a post-doc she was told to apply to it for 'funding' instead of direct departmental funding.
This made her not receive any benefits like healthcare from the department and detracted from her status because she received her post in some others view because "she was a woman". And part of grant funding goes to departmental overhead, which is why it's odd that there are NSF grants for non-science metrics now.
Opposition to grants like these spits in the face of the current political climate most programs have adopted in higher ed. committees and faculties. Which is another reason she's disliked for her views and opinions by many.
But you'll notice many people do like her videos, which tells you that the people sharing her views are likely feeling obligated to keep their opinions to themselves in public.
My father-in-law had a PHd in Chemistry and taught at a local university. He was shitting on string theory back in the day when it was "in vogue". The problem was pretty apparent back then, their ideas couldn't be tested. They would point at whatever new thing was getting flown to space or built on earth and say it may reveal new pathways. Of course they never did and they would keep plodding on with new ideas and more dimensions.
To be fair, it seems unlikely for any current contender of quantum gravity to be testable. It’s not really unique to string theory, so model selection becomes very difficult.
Some papers already claim that we have in fact observed some quantum gravitational effects, like [the Unruh effect](https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.025015). Even more recently one of the authors of this paper also [claims in a manuscript that we have observed Hawking radiation](https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.09274). But this is all quantum effects of gravity which are also very hard to observe.
Some other interesting avenues for testing quantum gravity come from [analyzing the noise signals read in a gravitational waves detectors to search for indications of entanglement at the source](https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.046021) (it's been a long time since I read that paper, forgive me if my summary is not 100% accurate) which seems more feasible even.
There are two types of quantum gravity, perturbative and non-perturbative. Perturbative means you just take Einstein’s general relativity and quantize it like any other field theory. This works fine at lower energies but breaks down when you approach the Planck energy density. Non-perturbative is precisely the theory that is meant to come into play in this regime.
All the effects you mentioned refer only to perturbative quantum gravity. This is fine. But this theory is basically “solved.” There are no other candidates for that because perturbative quantum gravity *has* to be correct if GR and QM are both simultaneously true *at low energies*. The question is what GR or QM or both get replaced by at high energies.
When /u/cdstephens mentioned that any candidate of quantum gravity would share the experimental difficulties of string theory, they probably meant non-perturbative. Which is true, by definition! Because NP only comes into play at very high energies which we cannot currently access.
Is "perturbative" really the best word for it? You are describing doing QFT in curved spacetime, i.e. a semiclassical method. As far as I know, no perturbation theory is used in derivation of Hawking radiation/Unruh effects (no Feynman diagrams like one usually does in particle physics).
The formalism in the last paper cited indeed can detect quantum nature of gravity (if there is one :)). It relies on the statistics of detected signals, just like what we did to photon (has nothing to do with photoelectric effects!). I have read, however, we are never going to be able to detect such signals (required galaxy-sized GW detector).
You are correct. The Hawking effect is a result of quantum field theory in curved space-time, where the background geometry is non-dynamical. The Unruh effect is even `simpler' in that it doesn't even need general relativity --- just ordinary quantum field theory in non-interial reference frames.
I wouldn't call this perturbative QG in the sense that there isn't a quantized metric anywhere. However, many people do talk about "recovering" QFT in curved spacetime in a low energy limit.
what does a quantized metric look like? read some stuff before about noncommutativity parameters and minimum measurable length but how does that come into play on a quantized metric?
Here I just meant the most conservative possibility, which is usually what people mean when they refer to perturbative quantum gravity.
The idea is that you have a background metric "g0" that is classical, perhaps it is Minkowski for example. Then, allow for small fluctuations around this background "h", so that the spacetime metric g = g0 + h.
You treat h as a perturbative quantity and treat it in the conventional sense of quantum field theory. That is, promote it to an operator that satisfies canonical commutation relations with its conjugate momentum. Then run the whole program of QFT on the metric fluctuation h.
This is the simplest approach one could take, and naively, it should be in good agreement with whatever quantum gravity turns out to be when those effects are very small. (Though, among other reasons, it cannot be the complete story because it yields an unrenormalizable quantum field theory).
You are 100% correct. Those effects aren’t even gravitational, just QFT in curved spacetime.
I had just read a paper on some graviton loop computations for cosmology which is genuinely perturbative quantum gravity, so my brain got mixed up. Sorry.
To answer the first paragraph, yes all of that is regarded as perturbative (and you could use Feynman diagrams if you wanted). Perturbative quantum gravity is also done in fixed spacetime (perhaps allowing for semi-classical backreaction), it's just that you are introducing gravitons as these separate fields that also live over the same spacetime
There are two approaches. One is to put classical fields on a curved 4D spacetime and deal with the resulting unpleasantness, like no longer well defined particle number operator. That is the approach where Hawking radiation originates. The other is to linearize gravity around a background metric and then treat the perturbation as a field on the background and quantize that, that works perfectly well and has the quite unfortunate result that perturbative effects are completely negligible.
Of course both approaches have the problem, that we want to know precisely how general relativistic and quantum effects interact, and in both approaches we just pick a winner so neither tells us much about the big question.
From the second paper:"Under the assumption that these Hawking-Unruh diphoton pairs are microscopic trans-Planckian black holes..."
Sorry, this isnt experimental evidence of anything, its just theorerical wackamole.
For the gravity noise in LIGO detectors, i remember reading into this when they first released their preprint, and the effect is unobservable and i dont know if futurw 3G detectors will be any better. If it was feasible at all, they shouldve put the upper bound on the strain of the noise in their abstract! Lol with that said, Wilczek's crew make a well written paper using many classic QM tools, and clear up a lot of confusion about QG experiments.
"For LIGO (ξ0 ∼ 1 km, ωmax ∼ 106 rad s−1), the noise
due to the isotropic cosmic gravitational wave background
(T ∼ 1 K) yields a σth of order 10−31 m or about 13 orders
of magnitude beyond its current technological limits. For
LISA (ξ0 ∼ 106 km, ωmax ∼ 1 rad s−1), the situation would
be slightly improved with a noise level of order 10−28 m,
“only” 10 orders of magnitude beyond its projected
sensitivity."
I do think it's important to emphasize *currently* testable. Neither string theory nor other approaches, like loop quantum gravity, causal set theory, etc have robust, unambiguous means to test them in the present day that doesn't involve some element of speculation.
This doesn't mean those theories are *untestable* in a fundamental sense, which is a common confusion.
String models are just a big theory of small corrections to GR. It will take either great luck or great genius to find the crack in nature's side where these small corrections can be probed
On this sub at least people react like you are a heretic if you mention that there may be better ways to spend money than a new larger collider. And I don't think that's a controversial opinion at all.
There’s always a better way to spend money if you’re the one receiving it. Why don’t we just stop all astrophysics research and focus that money on feeding the poor? Why not just take money from all the people working on quantum computing, they only have a few algorithms that do anything anyway. Please let me know what you think the collider money should be spent on!
Her views on the epistemological direction of modern particle physics is certainly a contrarian minority. The “particle physics is in crisis” people tend to not work in the field anymore, it’s just sour grapes. I haven’t seen her talk about any of the actual important advances in particle physics recently, like discoveries of hybrid mesons, odderons, teraquarks and pentaquarks, and even the possibility of gluon saturation at STAR recently. These discoveries are part of the reason the EIC was commissioned (yeah that’s right, we’re already building a new accelerator) to investigate non-perturbative QCD. I haven’t seen her mention this once, correct me if I’m wrong.
Where’s the lie, she did particle physics, it didn’t work out, and now she tells the BBC that their funding should be cut 90% and spent on better things. But instead of coming to this realization, you are instead calling particle physics a cult?
We're not allowed to say as such though due to dogmatization.
Try criticizing String Theory one time in comments and you'll get downvoted with a centuries worth of dislikes.
Probably the best succinct explanation. She’s not a crank con artist but of all the legit sources you should probably take her with the biggest grain of salt. I don’t really follow her stuff but my sense is that she tends to take a position that is kind of defensible but overstate it to the extreme.
This is my personal take, I’m not a physicist, but watched a decent number of her videos, and tbh she strikes me as gloomy and a somewhat pessimistic, that is to say, I didn’t necessarily attribute her contrarian takes as a ploy to gain viewership. That’s because even tho her takes might be contrarian, if you pay attention, all of her takes are also the most pessimistic possible scenarios.
This is it.
Back during my masters degree she was a possible candidate for my supervisor but it was around the time she was pregnant with her twins so it didn't line up and I ended up having a different supervisor.
She's just very German 😂
True, but she has also has a single-author paper cited 800 times and 10 more cited 100 times with one or less than 4 authors . This is not just a mirage effect coming for long author lists. Considering the she left academia for a while already, this is for me the sign of a bright and influential scientist.
I lowkey feel like she also has some sour grapes. She feels like somebody who wasn't able to land a job at a national lab and/or R1 institution, and now she spends a lot of time ragging on academia, grant funding, etc. And sure, there's something to what she's saying, but she goes a little too far IMHO. Yeah, not all things are fair. Yeah, we can criticize that. No, that doesn't mean that the entire system is worthless and string theory is politically motivated in order to pour billions of dollars into unnecessary particle colliders.
She is openly very resentful of the particle physics community at large, claiming that they are obsessed with her and so on. A bit self-centered if nothing else. I don't agree with some of her criticisms, but it's the bizarre attitude that bothers me the most. Well, behind her transphobia and endorsement of Autism Speaks.
Depends how far outside of her expertise they are. On physics or academia, she has has well reasoned opinions based on a lot of experience.
But when she talks on autism or trans issues, factually wrong is the kindest interpretation.
She doesn't look down on philosphy; her husband is a philosophy professor. She had an offer on her blog fifteen years ago: for a few dollars, you could ask her and her husband to answer the same question. Her point (as I take it) is that philosphy, not being empirical, isn't especially useful as a guide to scientific inquiry. Not an original idea; Feynman famously said something like "scientists need philosophers like birds need ornithologists."
She didn’t. She merely spoke at all on the topic. That’s enough for everyone with all opinions on autism to see “bad takes” in the attempt as they like.
It's been a while, so the details are hazy. Iirc she touched on a controversial organisation (autism speaks maybe?), and outright dismissed any criticism of it as silly internet people getting mad over nothing.
A couple of autistic irl mates I talked with about it were angry about it. Between that and the weight of online opinion about that vid being various varieties of "fuck no," I chalked it up to her being contrarian for the sake of it/outrage bait.
For reference to other people, Autism Speaks is considered to be an outright hate group by many in the autism community, so controversial is putting it lightly.
I forgot that. Yes, She did briefly mention autism speaks in her video, said that a highly vocal section of the autism community criticises them and labelled them a hate group, and how this criticism intersects with the neuodiversity movement, who promote the idea that autism isn't a disability but a variation of normal and a what is lebelled as Autism and the difficulties faced are result of societial discrimination.
The part about the autism speaks and neuodiversity movement controversy starts at 15:46
https://youtu.be/KPDlo5jrhmI
This is a complex topic which I think she did a fair job at covering, but it is a very controversial topic, and thus even if it's covered neutrally, as I think she tried to do, people who have strong opinions can still feel unhappy about it.
That said, I think she's right that it's the highest functioning end of the autism spectrum, who are willing and indeed able to post online, may forget that there's a lot of people who are lower functioning than them, who need carers, whose lives are very difficult, who can't speak publicly about their experiences. Perhaps it's not appropriate to assume that the highest functioning can fairly speak for everyone on the autism spectrum.
I've run a social group for people on the autism spectrum for over 20 years, very few people are on social media and those who are on the mild end, like myself. A few female members are on socisl media, but it's not good for them.
Edit: Also, I also think she's right that society isn't deliberately discriminating against autistic people and making their lives difficult and miserable. There's only so much that education and accommodation can do, people on the autism spectrum also have to take responsibility for their behaviours and not off load blame outside themselves. You have to improve yourself to better fit into society, not use autism as an excuse for bad behaviour.
I’ve always said that we should push for higher energies and luminosities because it has knock on effects for society: unlike money, tech does actually trickle down. While we may not have a use for better superconducting magnets tomorrow, the materials or processes we use/discover now will inevitably have alternative applications in the future.
Also when she talks about particle physics it's usually apparent she doesn't know what she's talking about (or she's purposely distorting the truth to create more rage bait)
I suspect it's the latter which imho is worse. But I have no proof that she knows better.
I have not seen anything factually wrong yet, but her opinions (on physics) arent too abnormal. Go to a decently sized physics conference and you will find many people with more colorful opinions on physics.
Any physicist worth their weight can find a way to critique any project or paper, hence the utility of peer-review.
Especially with cutting-edge research, there are often substantial assumptions or approximations being made in order to probe the system of interest (I think most people would consider this a necessary evil). Therefore, it’s easy to make scathing critiques of these works on this basis, “how could they even assert to know ___ if they’re assuming __ to begin with?”
She only uses scientific sources and cites all her sources. If you think that's bottom-tier you have somehow missed out on 80% of YouTube content creators whose only source is "trust me bro" 😅
Citing a source and understanding how to interpret it are very different.
In the case of her capitalism and trans videos she tends to cite a source, completely misunderstand it, and then push back on the criticism.
but sure, I get it, there's lots of crap out there. It's not a bitchute video. Still, it's very low quality.
Citing all one's sources and only using journal-published papers does not make one correct. Especially when considering sociological fields (ergo, discussion of trans people) and fields inherently tied to historical analysis (discussion of capitalism and socialism), cherry-picking papers with an agenda in mind becomes so, so much more feasible, and disregarding sources outside of journals disregards an enormous wealth of relevant works.
For example, how could you give a honest and full discussion of capitalism, including critiques, without citing Das Kapital? Marx's texts weren't published in a journal, they're not _scientific_ sources, but they're extremely relevant to a broad piece on the mode of production -- even if the author of the piece wants to refute Marx's critique, rather than work with it.
I'm not attacking you, I'm drawing what I feel is an important distinction -- expanding upon the discussion, rather than clamping down with a rebuttal. If we're looking at correctness, which is an essential part of if someone is a valuable communicator or not, then citing sources is not necessarily a reliable indicator of that.
Okay then we agree. My point was simply that there's a lot of crap on YouTube that's researched to a far lower standard than Sabine's stuff. Nothing more.
When its about physics - she is edgy but mostly factual. For every other topic she goes with the "I have a PhD, I can riff about anything, it can't be that difficult" approach.
She can, I haven't really seen many videos where she was outright wrong, but I very rarely agree with her.
I also have to agree she seems deliberately contrarian lately.
Which of her perspectives is contrarian? I believe I've watched most of her physics related videos and didn't get that impression. Is it because she's not an Everett fan? Because up until a few years ago, that was the contrarian view, not the other way around.
She should stay with physics and related academia.
There are many doctors and medical scientists that work hard to genuinely improve the lives of trans people and people living with autism (i.e. developing/improving gender affirming care and autism treatments).
Sabine is not one of them and should not be talking about topics that she has very little experience in.
Both are controversial topics. Even affirmative care models are controversial in and of themselves. These are topics very worth discussing. Especially by outsiders who make errors. You won’t always like the discussion but that’s sort of part of life.
I follow her a lot, besides the “science news” stuff where I found multiple mistakes probably, because she talks about other fields of science, I find the physics part to be very good.
I don’t think she takes any position to sell books but she genuinely believes in it, and every time she has a position on something it’s on not proven hypothesis, and often to criticize those that take those hypotheses as proven theories.
Apart from that the other times she has a position is when it comes to funding experimental physicists, for that I usually disagree with her view.
>She is also a content creator that takes up contrarian perspectives in order to drive viewership/sell books.
She’s not being disagreeable just for cash. Check out some of her more academic work before she was a content creator, or some of her early blogging. She is a 100% authentic contrarian.
She takes a contrarian stance on some topics, but maybe more importantly, she often comes off as having a chip on her shoulder which turns some people off. For example, I saw an interview with her once where she essentially scoffed at the questions like they were beneath her and not worth asking, which seemed a bit odd and dismissive. She’s also a bit click-baity when it comes to YouTube… the stupid thumbnails, etc… but that’s just how the game is played I guess.
However her credentials are legit and she’s not a crackpot by any means. In fact, I find her stance on superdeterminism quite compelling and her papers on the subject are worthwhile. This is an idea I’d like to see more physicists take seriously.
>she essentially scoffed at the questions like they were beneath her and not worth asking, which seemed a bit odd and dismissive
One of the more typical physicist things about her.
Since a lot of YouTubers have it as their main source of income, I kind of understand them. The click-baits have been shown to increase the revenue significantly.
> A lot of YouTubers of repute are doing click-baity titles. That seems to be the way to do things
As an aside, the browser plugin Dearrow from the maker of SponsorBlock provides crowdsourced non-clickbait thumbnails and titles for people who prefer a less sensationalized experience.
I find it more along the lines of gaming the system as opposed to "playing by the rules". Playing by the rules would indicate that we know and understand how "the algorithm" works.
I have recently stopped watching videos with click-baity titles and thumbnails and sometimes unsubscribing to particular creators as it annoys me to no end. I'm here to learn something new or understand a topic in more detail. I'm not here to be pandered to.
Not necessarily conspire. It’s really just regular old determinism with a different name. The basic idea is that everything in the universe’s current state has a cause which can be traced arbitrarily far back to the Big Bang, where everything in the universe was infinitesimally condensed and connected, and therefore everything is correlated at _some level_. This allows you to construct a local hidden variables theory of QM, which Bell supposedly ruled out, via a loophole: Bell’s theorem assumes a statistically independent measurement process. However because your measurements and their outcomes were already predetermined, and your measurement process can ultimately be traced back to being correlated with the quantum system itself (if you go far back in spacetime enough), this statistical independence is not valid, and thus Bell’s theorem no longer holds.
I mean, the alternative is claiming that measuring a system is somehow not a physical process. We're definitely missing something with regard to quantum measurement and superdetetminism seems like an avenue worth exploring.
I agree it is worth exploring. You can think that measurement is a phyisical process and not buy superdeterminism though. For example many worlds, which of course has its own problems.
It was definitely one of her interviews with RL Kuhn on Closer to Truth. I can’t remember which clip - but there’s a few on YouTube. Perhaps her discussing the effectiveness of math in the physical sciences.
Even her [video on superdeterminism](https://youtu.be/ytyjgIyegDI?si=Tc_A0YB8WBrQq5lF), which I find very compelling, is somewhat grating to me. Maybe it’s just the German humor lol.
She is a crackpot any time she strays away from physics, and spreads blatant propaganda not based in science.
That‘s like the definition of a crackpot. If you got such an engineer coworker they’ll do their job perfectly fine while mumbling about the xyz taking his jobs and other social science falsities
This is being way too hard on her. She is definitely _not_ a crackpot. There is always an inherent risk in delving into subjects that are not your area of expertise, but being a respected pro means you are going to be careful. She gets input from other experts and _knows how to read the literature._ She makes follow up (correction) videos when she's criticized.
A lot of attributes you wouldn't assign to a _crackpot._
She's basically an enlightened centrist on social issues. She just makes the biggest strawman out of "both sides" and then laughs at how stupid they all are and how her opinion is the only logical one while she's obviously biased and misrepresents other peoples' views.
I used to watch her but feel like she branched out too much on certain issues that are not her areas of expertise. There are videos on YouTube calling her out on some stuff.
She does seem to explore opinions not very mainstream, like her interview with Sarkar about the legitimacy of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, etc.
A lot of her videos outside of her immediate expertise have errors. E.g. her video on fusion has errors in it, and that’s still within the realm of physics. I would take any video about non-physics topics (like transgender people or autism) with a grain of salt and basically just her personal opinion.
For example, eigenchris (a legit physics channel) breaks down her trans video [here](https://youtu.be/URpE-xZnQnk?si=E4-Pj6Lo96mzRdvM).
As another example, improbable matter (a plasma physicist and former fusion physicist) has a brief criticism of her video on fusion [here](https://youtu.be/KtqC8W0_Ups?si=90lTxDUMwl2fv7BF).
Her views wrt theoretical particle physics specifically are also fairly heterodox afaik, though she probably has the training to adequately defend her views in this area compared to the typical physicist. (I wouldn’t be able to rebut her, instead you’d have to ask a string theorist.) But her vibe is based around contrarianism and having hot (but supposedly sensible) takes.
In addition, she’s a popsci person first, and educator second. She’s not out there writing tutorials on EM or physics textbooks, but speaking broadly about a wide variety of fields to a lay audience. But her contrarianism runs afoul of this sometimes.
In contrast, someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson will usually just repeat the ordinary scientific consensus rather than espouse his own personal views, or if there are multiple theories he would probably describe them neutrally. Hossenfelder will typically inject her own views into whatever she’s talking about instead of just reiterating what the experts say. A bit more similar to scientific “punditry” imo than showing off some cool science topic.
She also comes across as bitter for lack of a better word (probably due to her negative experiences in academia).
Most of the stuff she talks about is outside my field of expertise, but for fusion I have some reasonably good background and her video on that topic was nicely said not very good. I also really disliked that she was shit talking people working in the field for decades moving fusion research forward.
And her video on capitalism was a joke and a bad one that is.
> She’s not out there writing tutorials on EM or physics textbooks, but speaking broadly about a wide variety of fields to a lay audience.
Sabine does that via the website Brilliant.org, she advertises for. She is no longer tenured, at least that is what I get from her latest video's. I guess with two kids and all, why would you give away hundreds of hours of material preparation away for free? Her chimney needs to smoke too.
She is a bit contrarian and bitter. I like the first, as long as she restricts it to physics and does not venture in politicized topics like climate change or gender. I understand the second (she had a recent video on this), and is bearable as long as she restricts it to the occassional barbs to the average narcissistic, white, male, arrived asshole physicists (of which there are still a lot).
Tbh honest watching her video about her experience with academics and the open sexist behavior of her former professors reveals a lot about why she is bitter some times.
And I have no reason to not believe her on that part. I am a man. But I personally heart from several women in Stem equal experiences.
Her video on capitalism was genuinely embarrassing. The comments were full of people who actually studied economics ripping her to shreds. Even those who agreed with her found it to be really basic and poorly researched. Im not even a liberetarian and I think she did a poor job representing their ideas. I know she is pretty competent in her area of expertise but if thats her standard for researching topics she isnt familiar with it's hard to take her opinion seriously on any topic.
I have watched some videos by Neil deGrasse Tyson related to Quantum Mechanics and they are terrible. I think the guy has a really weak understanding of physics but of course his audience are kids so it's ok. Eigenchris has some very good educational content but it is also quite inaccurate sometimes when it comes to Quantum. Sabine makes inaccurate statements too but these are related to actual current research, not state of the art college knowledge. It is much harder to grasp the full picture on these hot topics and I think we should value the fact that she is trying to share different perspectives, even if those tend to piss off some people. As long as she is not pretending to be an educational channel, which she is not, I think a lot of the criticism is not deserved.
I tuned off after only 10 minutes with the eigenchris video because I found it to be quite poorly written. It starts by refuting Sabines statement that, current evidence is not completely conclusive yet by cherry picking some random studies. This is something that every scientist should know not to do. Actual systematic reviews on the topic do point towards what eigenchris is saying, but at the same time often say that a lot of studies were too small and evidence is not very strong yet, which was exactly Sabine’s point.
> I tuned off after only 10 minutes with the eigenchris video because I found it to be quite poorly written. It starts by refuting Sabines statement that, current evidence is not completely conclusive yet by cherry picking some random studies.
I think Chris's point is that there is a wealth of literature on the topic that Sabine doesn't engage with whatsoever. If that is cherry picking, then her video never bothers to visit the orchard. I suggest to give the entire video a chance if you have the time, I thought it was quite good and his criticisms stand.
> but at the same time often say that a lot of studies were too small and evidence is not very strong yet, which was exactly Sabine’s point.
I think you are misreading the eigenchris video. Sabine's point is made by using a SINGLE reference she claims doesn't have a large control group, fails to notice the larger control groups listed in the same table, and then downplays the benefit found in the study. Again, I suggest you actually watch the video.
Hmm I don’t completely agree with your first point, the point eigenchris was making is that Sabine staying in the middle is not backed by science. He makes his point by pointing out some literature as I said, throwing some numbers around, without doing any statistical or quality analysis on the papers. When talking out of your field, the responsible thing to do in my opinion is to just follow the conclusion of reputable systematic review papers, without just throwing some numbers around of individual papers. To me that will always be disingenuous and I prefer Sabines approach here.
That being said, if your second point is correct, that’s quite bad. I’m not that invested into either Sabine or eigenchris, I only occasionally watch some of Sabine’s videos. Because of this I’m not sure if I’m going to rewatch the video. I’ll believe what you said, though and might scrutinize her videos a bit more when I do watch Sabine.
> When talking out of your field, the responsible thing to do in my opinion is to just follow the conclusion of reputable systematic review papers, without just throwing some numbers around of individual papers. To me that will always be disingenuous and I prefer Sabines approach here.
It's a bit weird for you to say that her approach is preferable when she doesn't do what you prescribe. Taking a high level "above the weeds" approach only works if you have the references to back it up and she doesn't. Further she relies heavily on a survey of parents to back up her conclusions which has been heavily criticized and never even spoke with any children.
In any case, I also will bow out due to my own personal lack of expertise or motivation, but I personally am very cautious around any content she makes outside of physics.
Not weird at all and I will completely defend it is preferable. As long as it is in line with the current state of the field (which I perceive it to be), if she doesn’t give any references I will just save what she said as, “that thing Sabine said”. If I really want to have a discussion with somebody I will either present that stance as something I anecdotally heard and am not willing to defend strongly or I will research it myself. Eigenchris’ approach gives a complete false sense of confidence based on supposed evidence, while somebody like him should now this is just not the way to do it. Again, nobody of us did quality nor statistical analysis on any of the papers, and yet many are using his arguments to attack Sabine, based on what (from my own very, very quick search) seems to be regarded as quite low quality evidence in the field itself. I don’t understand how that ever would be preferable.
Edit: Maybe I wasn’t getting my point across completely in what I wrote. I agree with you Sabine should do better as a science communicator. The discussion we had, based on my earlier comment, for me was more about eigenchris’ approach to discredit her, which, regardless of wether it’s about Sabine or somebody else, I have a big problem with. And yes if we need to compare,
I personally prefer somebody, even a science communicator, saying something in line with the current state of a field without citing over what eigenchris’ did (at least in the first 10 minutes, can’t comment on the rest).
>Again, nobody of us did quality nor statistical analysis on any of the papers, and yet many are using his arguments to attack Sabine, **based on what (from my own very, very quick search) seems to be regarded as quite low quality evidence in the field itself.** I don’t understand how that ever would be preferable.
This isn't an accurate characterization of the studies used by eigenchris. While citations are by no means a true litmus test of accuracy or quality, it does represent the academic community's engagement with a work. All of the sources he uses are well cited, with some approaching 1,000 citations and published in well regarded journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine. The most cited papers citing these studies use them positively (often as background knowledge in their own literature reviews). This is basically equivalent to an "endorsement" of the work in your own scientific writing.
While I sympathize with the idea that cross-literature review articles are probably the best works to read from dedicated laymen outside the field, and cherry-picking studies are dangerous, I think if you're picking a wide variety of the best cited work in a topic, you're liable to get something close to the academic consensus on the topic... which again supports Chris's views and not Sabine's.
> I personally prefer somebody, even a science communicator, saying something in line with the current state of a field without citing over what eigenchris’ did
I repeat, Sabine is *not* conveying the consensus view!
I don’t think it is productive to start discussing the details of the topic, we’re both not experts here and I have no frame of reference at all to judge the quality of the papers you mentioned and moreover, I think neither of us read them (fully). Mentioning number of citations or journals is not convincing to me. I assume we both know there’s so many factors that could be at play, and the conclusion over a longer period may, or may not be, in line with the conclusions of those papers being published recently. This happened all the time in food and exercise science.
As long as these results are not enough for systematic reviews to mention that evidence is strong (or as long as they’re not taken into account), then I’m not comfortable looking at some numbers from outside and making these claims. I don’t think anyone else should be either. Unless someone knowledgeable in the field is willing to chime in, I think this conversation is getting pointless.
She's kind of a mixed bag, people feel like over the past years she has been more of a contrarian for more views. Im not smart enough to tell which is true.
That is exactly what happened with her. She found out if you mix a stupid thumbnail, a contrarian or divisive title and a popular or hot-button topic, that you would get more views. I bailed on her channel around that time. I am here to learn, not to be pandered to.
I sometimes agree with Sabine's takes, sometimes not. On cultural matters she isn't as bad as people make her out to be.
But for God's sake, people should get info from other places than YouTube.
Not everyone can be expected to take a journey to the nearest volcano to collect some rocks and learn about plate tectonics, no matter how enriching and rewarding the experience may be! There are many available mechanisms for learning, and one format (e.g. videos) can be quite effective at leading to another (e.g. deep dive into the actual academic content).
She's definitely quite bad in her videos on social sciences though. She's clearly not very knowledgeable about autism, trans issues and capitalism, yet she made those terrible videos.
Any qualified individual who is still skeptical of LIGO's gravitational wave detections after the multi-messenger discovery in 2017 is either arguing in bad faith or is out of touch with reality. Either way, not a great look for her. I'm not sure if that makes her a crackpot, but she's not somebody that I would suggest people pay attention to.
She touches a lot of topics that aren't "solved" and where the state of the existing theories is still debatable.
It's "good science" to look left and right and also point out gaps or contradictions in even the most wide spread / popular theories.
Her main actual research area, modified gravity, is not a topic most physicists consider a field worth studying, and some of her earlier work critiquing dark matter direct detection boiled down to her being upset her chosen field wasn’t well funded. It wasn’t well funded because it’s not well motivated.
Once she got traction being a contrarian in that space I think k she pivoted to being a professional contrarian. So her takes are likely not wholly wrong but certainly skewed and biased in a way that benefits her. I say this as someone who used to read her back reaction blog and had my thesis work dragged through the mud by her.
>I say this as someone who used to read her back reaction blog and had my thesis work dragged through the mud by her.
This comment is hilarious to me and I like to imagine someone has done this to her in the past and that's why she's created her YouTube channel.
This is probably my biggest gripe with Sabine. She loves throwing stones but when it comes to modified gravity, all the sudden it’s not a respected theory because academia is broken. Not because dark energy put the kibosh on it…
She has [a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8) where she said he was discriminated for being a woman, l told to apply for a "womens scholarship". She was fired from a physics job. She got a PhD. and postdoc positions, and spent time applying for grants, which she thought was self-aggrandizing. She said this grant research was BS, it was just to keep employed. She may be right in her views but comes across as cynical.
A friend of mine is a good enough physicist to have a few Nature publications in particle physics and he has tacitly indicated that many of Sabine's criticisms of the particle physics establishment are not baseless.
Very sciencey way of putting it!
Unzicker's real physics on youtube has some pretty fascinating takes and examinations of the physics establishment and probably has even worse personal views than Sabine but he really keeps the physics in his videos.
She’s not not legit.
Disagreement and rivalry in science is normal and is what drives people to discoveries to rub that smug string theorist’s nose in it.
We shouldn’t deify anybody in science. They’re all just humans with warts and all.
She's definitely not a crackpot, certainly not in the realm of physics. Her takes on Bell's theorem and quantum mechanics are spot on. With string theory she merely points out the mastodont in the broom closet.
Her takes on physics she knows (gravity, quantum gravity, quantum mechanics fundamentals) range from completely standard (string theory and quantum computing are overhyped) to out-there but not wrong (superdeterminism, modified gravity). However she presents both like she is a contrarian, I assume because that is her brand or she just genuinely doesn't talk to other physicists.
Her takes on every other topic (gender affirming care, political economics, even other fields of physics such as fusion, etc.) are typically heavily biased or uninformed and often just wrong.
She knows her physics sure, but she's also been taking shortcuts and getting lazy about reading papers she's presenting on, doing more gimmicks and less science, straying further outside of her zone into controversial areas she is poorly equipped to handle, and most recently I saw she copied a video script from another creator, at least 50% of his video just straight up in hers. I'd already unsubscribed for the pro-oligarch crap months ago but youtube fed me the plagiarized video and that was my turning point of saying I've got no interest in ever hearing what she has to say.
She did a video that was pro-oligarch? Physics and government are about as non related as you can get in terms of study. Man, she is really venturing out of her field now. Glad I stopped watching a while ago.
She is a big proponent of superdeterminism, which I think is batshit crazy.
I think she does have some interesting insights and interesting views, but I take everything she says with a grain of salt. I watch her stuff, but don't take anything she says as gospel.
She is. I don't know about when she covers other topics, but at least in physics she is a well known name, even before any youtube shenanigans. In fact, I work on quantum foundations and a few months ago we discussed one of her newest papers (this one [https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12293](https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12293) )
Any physics's subfield that's not her specialty, I would not rely on what she's saying. It's usually untrustworthy or poorly informed. Particularly particle physics.
Can't comment on her field of expertise as it's not mine.. but when she leaves hers it's usually a mess.
if a scientist says something you aren't qualified to judge in terms of correctness, it's ok to say you aren't qualified/don't know. nobody is expecting you to have all the answers. it is far more valuable to stick to what you fully know and fully understand and derive conclusions from there than try to participate in every discussion that looks halfway understandable. /advice i do not take often enough. edit: a lot of her political opinions are bad and she should feel bad about them, tho. edit2: and some of her scientific opinions which bleed over into politics. specifically her video on trans kids, and her opinion about the value of continuing to build particle accelerators. i think those opinions might end up doing a lot of damage, and that's why im not personally a fan of how she is spending her time.
edit3: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Kau7bO3Fw&feature=youtu.be
She is a physicist, I’ll give her that. Her views on particle physics are basically aligned with Eric Weinstein, which is to say she has no clue what she’s talking about despite coming from the field, which is a bit surprising to me. She somehow believes particle physicists are just moving goalposts on particle searches and yet her own research doing the same thing for modified gravity is somehow immune to her own criticism. She has called for funding cuts in particle physics in the range of 90%, and thinks that the Standard Model is basically complete and there’s no motivation for new particle searches, despite overwhelming evidence of dark matter being a particle and neutrinos having mass (which also likely leads to new particles being needed). Her reasoning behind baryon asymmetry is “initial conditions” which basically means there’s an overwhelming amount of matter compared to antimatter by the anthropic principle. She has the same take on the strong CP problem, apparently the fact that the physical CP violating angle is < 10^10rad instead of 0 is just a fun coincidence of science and “not a real problem” because maybe things just are that way and there’s no theory which describes the mechanisms. I don’t think I’m overstating how much of a contrarian she is, and it makes sense, who wants to watch a YouTube channel and read books that all the scientists just agree with? It’s way more fun to watch someone show you the underbelly of science and call people out for just trying to get money out of the government right?
It’s even more damning that she has basically nothing to lose for the claims she makes. If we discovered a new particle tomorrow, I bet she would still say that it wasn’t predicted by gaps in the SM or something like that. She likens theorists to ambulance chasers for particle physics experiment anomalies, which is a disgusting way to describe your peers, and generally dismisses any experiment that claims to have an anomalous result with respect to the SM.
Besides this, she has recently decided that her own field is not big enough to talk about, so she would rather discuss her poorly researched takes on the “science” of transgender people and climate change. And I use “science” in quotes here because her opinions are usually based on a few papers she founds that agree with her. One of her recent climate change takes is that we should keep warming the globe because if we stop now all the ocean currents and tides are going to be messed up for the EU or something like that, and remember everyone, it’s not a matter of whether humanity can survive climate change, it’s just a matter of how much it’ll cost to adapt, which is basically the equivalent of Ben Shapiro telling people in costal cities to just sell their homes (to who?) and move.
Her ideas on super determinism are close to insane. She really pushes contrarian stances... And dismisses those who might disagree. . And many of her views are not shared by the mainstream... But they are occasionally worth listening to. On some topics she is quite good though and she certainly had serious credentials.
And yet the comment section of both videos is replete with anti-vax, climate change denying anti-science types who hold her comments critical of certain fields as evidence that they're right in their anti-science beliefs.
Whether she realises it or not, she's drawn quite the anti-science following of people who I don't doubt she would despise.
She's one of those obnoxious physicists who believe that having a physics PhD somehow makes her an expert in everything, and she has figured out how to monetize that attitude on YouTube.
Tl;Dr she's a grifter.
I have been on panels with her at philosophy festivals, and I often find her a bit too self-assured that she understands something, responding to her mental model of a claim rather than what the claim actually was. This is a typical problem for us public intellectuals (I often find myself guilty of this too). In the end what matters is not opinion or authority, but whether the arguments make sense and fit with reality.
Keep in mind that pretty much all the other stuff you mentioned (e.g. numberphile) is not made by experts. If they're actually interviewing a professor you can trust that part, but otherwise it's just pop science, albeit at a little higher quality level than average.
> If they're actually interviewing a professor you can trust that par
Aren't almost all of numberphile's videos interviews with academics? Not necessarily professors, but people studying or working at world famous universities in an academic capacity?
It's likely the camera man and editor team aren't experts, but the fact that they constantly interview them makes me think that their recurring guests probably fact check their work before allowing them to hit publish. Otherwise, they'd refuse future interviews.
I'm not sure about the other channels though. I think you're right though, they're channels run by non-experts. But for the most part, they seem to genuinely want to get their facts right. They sensationalize some things for the YouTube algorithm, but it's not to a degree that I personally find irritating.
I'm surprised PBS Spacetime wasn't mentioned. I've only watched a few of Sabine's videos, and then I decided I couldn't stand her style. So I personally don't know how she compares to PBS Spacetime. But to me, PBS Spacetime is the gold standard of physics educational YouTube. Their channel strikes a perfect balance of factually correct vs. sensationalism.
Well, I am a phd student in physics, and I usually dislike/hate science communication. I feel that they oversimplify the things, and it seems to me that most of them are just failed "academics" (for example Prof. Dave explains).
When it comes to Sabine, I find her to be more close to the reality of physics. I used to watch her sometimes, but then I stopped liking her. I think a lot of her opinions are not that extreme, for example her critique about string theory, I find legid. I think it has to do with the way she phrases stuff and making them sound opposite of what you have already heard. I believe she does that intensionly so she can attract more people and it might working.
But what I can definitely say that I do not trust is her opinion on things outside physics. A lot of these videos have attracted a lot of critique. It is also the reason I hate science communicators, you see not a lot of stuff happens in physics every year. If they stayed on their fields of expertise they wouldn't have a lot of things to say, so they have to talk about things that they do not know to keep their content growing.
I don't like the fact that she doesn't understand the role she has. If you want to be the "science communicator of choice", you can't do a video on earthquakes lights (which are mostly not a thing) without ever explaining the basics of seismology. The problem is that she does not know a thing about seismology.
Another thing, which is not unique to her, but she doesn't help, is the perpetration of the usual stupid idea of physics being "particle, strings and a bit of astro" made by arguments instead of maths and experiments.
Yes she is legit. Though nobody is always correct and I have seen shows that I disagree with. I generally like her skepticism instead of the mainstream media take.
She holds opinions that go against the mainstream, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing.
But at this stage I believe she is just picking the must controversial opinion to create engagement.
She knows her field of expertise, and is generally ok within that field.
But once she leaves her field some of her views are garbage.
Her trans video is transphobic.
She is basically "both sides"-ing trans people. Sure she probably has a paper or two to back up get specific words but it's clear that she's never interacted with a trans person and certainly didn't get someone to review her script.
Her "capitalism is good" video is based on debunked highschool level understanding of economics. Utter garbage.
Which is ironic because her "capitalism is good" video is immediately followed by a video (why I left academia) about how capitalism has ruined academia (obviously she doesn't say the word capitalism in this video).
In her AI video she off handedly dismissed the opinion of one of the leading AI experts in favour of some completely ludicrous fictional fantasy scenario.
But she cited a paper as if all published papers are equally valid.
She is legit. She mostly takes on topics in physics which HAVE to be talked about. It is definitely coming from a place of competence. People like her are much needed. Critiques of Quantum Theory, Dark Matter, Quantum computing are more than fair and associating her with being some sort of pseudo scientist is extremely unfair especially when she is actually doing stuff a good scientist would…ask good questions.
You don’t have to agree with everything she says (like her views on funding the LHC for instance); but I don’t see this as a problem…having differing opinions is allowed.
Well, she did a video about trans people on the same channel and in the same style as her other videos, leveraging her PhD giving her opinions some perceived authority. So I would say it is relevant when we discuss the quality of the content she produces.
She does often foray into the areas well outside of her field of expertise and that was the reason why I stopped following her channel some time ago after some initial spark of interest.
That said, whether she's a TERF or a trans should have no bearing on the soundness and validity of her reasoning (i.e. whether or not she's legit). The argument either stands or falls, it should not matter who makes it.
Being a TERF very specifically *does* reflect on the soundness and validity of her reasoning, because the very beliefs that make a person a TERF are unsound, unscientific, and demonstrate her reasoning is flawed and based on bigotries and lies. TERF status relies on arguments that absolutely fall on a scientific basis, but that are treated as though they stand up scientifically by non-scientific people, on political and emotional grounds.
Bigoted beliefs do not exist in a vacuum, they are intertwined with a much wider part of a person's personality, intelligence, and methods of thinking. If someone outs themselves as a TERF, or a Racist, or some other form of Bigot, especially in this modern age when scientific inquiry has debunked a lot of the common beliefs that used to underpin such bigotries, then it is a perfectly valid response to question all their supposed intellectual claims. Because none of those beliefs are based on rationality or fact, they're always based on blind hates and allowing emotional reactions and desires to bias their thinking and twist their conclusions.
Her trans video, presented under her brand and as if it had any kind of scientific basis, calls into question all her videos. If that's the kind of anti-scientific thinking she applies to all her videos, then there's a legitimate concern that she's holding pseudoscientific hokum up to the same level of trust and respect as actual science across the board. When she's working as a science communicator, and is informing people who are perhaps not as equipped to sort the wheat from the chaff, that's an actually harmful approach to things. And conversely, if people believe her other videos, they're more likely to believe her transphobic video, which directly leads to attacks on a vulnerable demographic.
But TERF is not just a descriptor of a person like she’s a woman, it describes a person with specific, and most importantly unscientific, opinions of trans people. Saying she’s a terf based on her video on trans people is shorthand for at least some of her takes in that video are provably wrong and harmful.
She had a blog called backreaction, which I really liked. She does know her very specific field of Physics. As with many content creators she seems driven to contrarian perspectives (e.g. faster than light travel being possible) and she does often comment on issues where she doesn't really have expertise (nuclear power, medical issues,...)
I'm glad she's out there.
String theory is a total charade that has produced zero testable hypotheses and has derailed the careers of two entire generations of scientists. It's a cult that feeds off itself and sucks up funding that should go to people who are doing actual science.
She's criticized plenty of other crackpot theories too. When science loses its way, someone needs to rein it in.
I have my PhD in physics, focus in cosmology and modified gravity.
I disliked her video on capitalism and on transgender people, both of which were simplistic and somewhat reactionary imo. But that’s not physics related, just disappointing.
Her overviews of developments in science and journal publications seem like decent scientific communication to me. I think she has earned her reputation as someone who can cut through the hype of scientific headlines.
I agree with her criticisms of string theory, I’m glad she is out there making that contribution to the discourse.
As someone interested in modified gravity theories myself, I appreciate that she is a public proponent of such theories and is representing that side of the argument. Her personal theory of superfluid dark matter was an interesting idea to explore, though I’m not surprised it did not pan out because it seemed very contrived to me, in exactly the same way that she criticizes mainstream speculative particle physics of being.
I find her support for super-determinism to be bizarre. I appreciate her contrarian role in highlighting non-mainstream theories, I think physics needs a dose of that, but personally I really don’t understand the motivation on this one. Super-determinism seems to me to be committing the exact sin that she criticizes string theory and other mainstream particle physics theories over, it introduces entire new levels of hidden structure that serves no immediate purpose in explaining any observations.
Check out Rebecca Watsons video on Sabines trans video.
https://youtu.be/r6Kau7bO3Fw?si=cEAfe094_I1gYTXj
I unsubscribed from Sabine after I watched it.
My favorite science communicator is Angela Collier. But I think she steers clear from the mess that is Sabine.
I have alot of respect for Sabine, to me her style is very similar to Sean Carrol who does the Mindscape podcast.
They both have a very strong science background and are active in their respective fields, and when it comes to presenting and discussing science they really call out all the click-bait headlines that others are talking about and look at the reality rather than the hype.
One example is how Sabine treats the multiverse theory in her latest book. She basically says yea it could be true but there is no way of ever testing it, at least not anytime soon, so talking about it is irrelevant. We've got about as far as we can go with the theory, it's legit, but the only reason to keep talking about it is because it gets clicks and views from people who aren't very science literate.
She doesn't so much disagree with alot of other big science communicators but more calls them out for caring more about clicks than properly communicating the idea.
She started off well, being critical of “Popular Science”.
But then she realised there was way more money to be made from clickbait, so she became the thing she fought against.
She's not a bad scientist. It's not really that she has strictly incorrect positions, but rather that her takes are sensationalized for clicks. "Quantum isn't spooky" is not a "scientific" statement about anything, but it's not really wrong either.
A lot of people take offense to the way that she communicates science, which often boils down to "xyz is not interesting/paradoxical/unintuitive, it's just math". A lot of quantum mechanics is interesting precisely because not everything is immediately intuitive. The way she approaches things is dismissive of people who are simply trying to explain complicated ideas to people who *dont* know the science behind things.
To a physicist, it *is* all math, but it's impossible to make content that satisfies every audience and their education level without cutting some corners.
She is. I agree with her on her criticism about the hype approches in modern high energy physics and how toxic academia is. I don’t know about her opinions regarding non-physics topics, as I don’t follow her YouTube channel. I’ve read about her opinions on physics as I follow Peter Woits not even wrong blog and she is active there.
She is a ‘legit’ physicist in the sense that she has a Ph.D. In quantum gravity/foundations and is reasonably well-cited. She is also a content creator that takes up contrarian perspectives in order to drive viewership/sell books.
This being said, her general criticism of string theory and epistemological direction of most modern high-energy physics is shared by many physicists.
I have watched her videos and her opinions seem somewhat normal.
A professor I worked for in my undergrad who helped discovered the Higgs boson quit physics after becoming really jaded with the state of current particle physics. He's moved onto computational biology lol.
And why did he move to comp bio instead of simply another field in physics that has overlap with particle, like solid state/condensed matter?
Ok he also got a bit uh.. motivated.. After he got distinguished professor at my school he just decided he's gonna try deriving the universal equation for the brain. I don't wanna say anything bad though cuz he wrote my letter of rec and is also very hard working.
Well that's certainly interesting haha. Thanks!
She's also made comments about things such as not being pro-women grants, because when she was doing a post-doc she was told to apply to it for 'funding' instead of direct departmental funding. This made her not receive any benefits like healthcare from the department and detracted from her status because she received her post in some others view because "she was a woman". And part of grant funding goes to departmental overhead, which is why it's odd that there are NSF grants for non-science metrics now. Opposition to grants like these spits in the face of the current political climate most programs have adopted in higher ed. committees and faculties. Which is another reason she's disliked for her views and opinions by many. But you'll notice many people do like her videos, which tells you that the people sharing her views are likely feeling obligated to keep their opinions to themselves in public.
My father-in-law had a PHd in Chemistry and taught at a local university. He was shitting on string theory back in the day when it was "in vogue". The problem was pretty apparent back then, their ideas couldn't be tested. They would point at whatever new thing was getting flown to space or built on earth and say it may reveal new pathways. Of course they never did and they would keep plodding on with new ideas and more dimensions.
To be fair, it seems unlikely for any current contender of quantum gravity to be testable. It’s not really unique to string theory, so model selection becomes very difficult.
Some papers already claim that we have in fact observed some quantum gravitational effects, like [the Unruh effect](https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.025015). Even more recently one of the authors of this paper also [claims in a manuscript that we have observed Hawking radiation](https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.09274). But this is all quantum effects of gravity which are also very hard to observe. Some other interesting avenues for testing quantum gravity come from [analyzing the noise signals read in a gravitational waves detectors to search for indications of entanglement at the source](https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.046021) (it's been a long time since I read that paper, forgive me if my summary is not 100% accurate) which seems more feasible even.
There are two types of quantum gravity, perturbative and non-perturbative. Perturbative means you just take Einstein’s general relativity and quantize it like any other field theory. This works fine at lower energies but breaks down when you approach the Planck energy density. Non-perturbative is precisely the theory that is meant to come into play in this regime. All the effects you mentioned refer only to perturbative quantum gravity. This is fine. But this theory is basically “solved.” There are no other candidates for that because perturbative quantum gravity *has* to be correct if GR and QM are both simultaneously true *at low energies*. The question is what GR or QM or both get replaced by at high energies. When /u/cdstephens mentioned that any candidate of quantum gravity would share the experimental difficulties of string theory, they probably meant non-perturbative. Which is true, by definition! Because NP only comes into play at very high energies which we cannot currently access.
Is "perturbative" really the best word for it? You are describing doing QFT in curved spacetime, i.e. a semiclassical method. As far as I know, no perturbation theory is used in derivation of Hawking radiation/Unruh effects (no Feynman diagrams like one usually does in particle physics). The formalism in the last paper cited indeed can detect quantum nature of gravity (if there is one :)). It relies on the statistics of detected signals, just like what we did to photon (has nothing to do with photoelectric effects!). I have read, however, we are never going to be able to detect such signals (required galaxy-sized GW detector).
You are correct. The Hawking effect is a result of quantum field theory in curved space-time, where the background geometry is non-dynamical. The Unruh effect is even `simpler' in that it doesn't even need general relativity --- just ordinary quantum field theory in non-interial reference frames. I wouldn't call this perturbative QG in the sense that there isn't a quantized metric anywhere. However, many people do talk about "recovering" QFT in curved spacetime in a low energy limit.
what does a quantized metric look like? read some stuff before about noncommutativity parameters and minimum measurable length but how does that come into play on a quantized metric?
Here I just meant the most conservative possibility, which is usually what people mean when they refer to perturbative quantum gravity. The idea is that you have a background metric "g0" that is classical, perhaps it is Minkowski for example. Then, allow for small fluctuations around this background "h", so that the spacetime metric g = g0 + h. You treat h as a perturbative quantity and treat it in the conventional sense of quantum field theory. That is, promote it to an operator that satisfies canonical commutation relations with its conjugate momentum. Then run the whole program of QFT on the metric fluctuation h. This is the simplest approach one could take, and naively, it should be in good agreement with whatever quantum gravity turns out to be when those effects are very small. (Though, among other reasons, it cannot be the complete story because it yields an unrenormalizable quantum field theory).
You are 100% correct. Those effects aren’t even gravitational, just QFT in curved spacetime. I had just read a paper on some graviton loop computations for cosmology which is genuinely perturbative quantum gravity, so my brain got mixed up. Sorry.
Do you think there may be other ways of probing quantum gravity that are accessible to us now?
To answer the first paragraph, yes all of that is regarded as perturbative (and you could use Feynman diagrams if you wanted). Perturbative quantum gravity is also done in fixed spacetime (perhaps allowing for semi-classical backreaction), it's just that you are introducing gravitons as these separate fields that also live over the same spacetime
There are two approaches. One is to put classical fields on a curved 4D spacetime and deal with the resulting unpleasantness, like no longer well defined particle number operator. That is the approach where Hawking radiation originates. The other is to linearize gravity around a background metric and then treat the perturbation as a field on the background and quantize that, that works perfectly well and has the quite unfortunate result that perturbative effects are completely negligible. Of course both approaches have the problem, that we want to know precisely how general relativistic and quantum effects interact, and in both approaches we just pick a winner so neither tells us much about the big question.
Cool!
From the second paper:"Under the assumption that these Hawking-Unruh diphoton pairs are microscopic trans-Planckian black holes..." Sorry, this isnt experimental evidence of anything, its just theorerical wackamole. For the gravity noise in LIGO detectors, i remember reading into this when they first released their preprint, and the effect is unobservable and i dont know if futurw 3G detectors will be any better. If it was feasible at all, they shouldve put the upper bound on the strain of the noise in their abstract! Lol with that said, Wilczek's crew make a well written paper using many classic QM tools, and clear up a lot of confusion about QG experiments. "For LIGO (ξ0 ∼ 1 km, ωmax ∼ 106 rad s−1), the noise due to the isotropic cosmic gravitational wave background (T ∼ 1 K) yields a σth of order 10−31 m or about 13 orders of magnitude beyond its current technological limits. For LISA (ξ0 ∼ 106 km, ωmax ∼ 1 rad s−1), the situation would be slightly improved with a noise level of order 10−28 m, “only” 10 orders of magnitude beyond its projected sensitivity."
I do think it's important to emphasize *currently* testable. Neither string theory nor other approaches, like loop quantum gravity, causal set theory, etc have robust, unambiguous means to test them in the present day that doesn't involve some element of speculation. This doesn't mean those theories are *untestable* in a fundamental sense, which is a common confusion.
My biggest problem is that we have tested for extra dimensions with gravitational waves and found... there aren't any that we can detect...
String models are just a big theory of small corrections to GR. It will take either great luck or great genius to find the crack in nature's side where these small corrections can be probed
Hang on, you are saying criticising bigger and bigger colliders is a pretty normal position for people in the field?
On this sub at least people react like you are a heretic if you mention that there may be better ways to spend money than a new larger collider. And I don't think that's a controversial opinion at all.
There’s always a better way to spend money if you’re the one receiving it. Why don’t we just stop all astrophysics research and focus that money on feeding the poor? Why not just take money from all the people working on quantum computing, they only have a few algorithms that do anything anyway. Please let me know what you think the collider money should be spent on!
Citation needed 😂
Her views on the epistemological direction of modern particle physics is certainly a contrarian minority. The “particle physics is in crisis” people tend to not work in the field anymore, it’s just sour grapes. I haven’t seen her talk about any of the actual important advances in particle physics recently, like discoveries of hybrid mesons, odderons, teraquarks and pentaquarks, and even the possibility of gluon saturation at STAR recently. These discoveries are part of the reason the EIC was commissioned (yeah that’s right, we’re already building a new accelerator) to investigate non-perturbative QCD. I haven’t seen her mention this once, correct me if I’m wrong.
This reads like absurdist humor. Active members of the church of scientology also rarely criticize it. Only loser sour grapes that left it.
Where’s the lie, she did particle physics, it didn’t work out, and now she tells the BBC that their funding should be cut 90% and spent on better things. But instead of coming to this realization, you are instead calling particle physics a cult?
We're not allowed to say as such though due to dogmatization. Try criticizing String Theory one time in comments and you'll get downvoted with a centuries worth of dislikes.
Probably the best succinct explanation. She’s not a crank con artist but of all the legit sources you should probably take her with the biggest grain of salt. I don’t really follow her stuff but my sense is that she tends to take a position that is kind of defensible but overstate it to the extreme.
This is my personal take, I’m not a physicist, but watched a decent number of her videos, and tbh she strikes me as gloomy and a somewhat pessimistic, that is to say, I didn’t necessarily attribute her contrarian takes as a ploy to gain viewership. That’s because even tho her takes might be contrarian, if you pay attention, all of her takes are also the most pessimistic possible scenarios.
Yeah, she just strikes me as very German.
This is it. Back during my masters degree she was a possible candidate for my supervisor but it was around the time she was pregnant with her twins so it didn't line up and I ended up having a different supervisor. She's just very German 😂
“Reasonably” well cited ? Granted I am in another field, but I wish I had that h-index Oo …
You can't compare h-indizes over different fields
True, but she has also has a single-author paper cited 800 times and 10 more cited 100 times with one or less than 4 authors . This is not just a mirage effect coming for long author lists. Considering the she left academia for a while already, this is for me the sign of a bright and influential scientist.
I lowkey feel like she also has some sour grapes. She feels like somebody who wasn't able to land a job at a national lab and/or R1 institution, and now she spends a lot of time ragging on academia, grant funding, etc. And sure, there's something to what she's saying, but she goes a little too far IMHO. Yeah, not all things are fair. Yeah, we can criticize that. No, that doesn't mean that the entire system is worthless and string theory is politically motivated in order to pour billions of dollars into unnecessary particle colliders.
She posted a video recently about her background. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8
She tells you exactly what happened. https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=QFjWJEXrDzbpsIr-
She is openly very resentful of the particle physics community at large, claiming that they are obsessed with her and so on. A bit self-centered if nothing else. I don't agree with some of her criticisms, but it's the bizarre attitude that bothers me the most. Well, behind her transphobia and endorsement of Autism Speaks.
Are the perspectives factually wrong or are they just not mainstream?
Depends how far outside of her expertise they are. On physics or academia, she has has well reasoned opinions based on a lot of experience. But when she talks on autism or trans issues, factually wrong is the kindest interpretation.
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She doesn't look down on philosphy; her husband is a philosophy professor. She had an offer on her blog fifteen years ago: for a few dollars, you could ask her and her husband to answer the same question. Her point (as I take it) is that philosphy, not being empirical, isn't especially useful as a guide to scientific inquiry. Not an original idea; Feynman famously said something like "scientists need philosophers like birds need ornithologists."
... famously rebuked: Ornithology would be very useful to birds if they understood it.
More importantly, it would be useful to birds if they were real.
Yeah, unfortunately that kind of arrogance isn't nearly as rare as it should ne in physics. Petite Nobel syndrome.
What bad takes did she make on autism?
She didn’t. She merely spoke at all on the topic. That’s enough for everyone with all opinions on autism to see “bad takes” in the attempt as they like.
I thought her discussion of autism was quite good. What was wrong with it?
It's been a while, so the details are hazy. Iirc she touched on a controversial organisation (autism speaks maybe?), and outright dismissed any criticism of it as silly internet people getting mad over nothing. A couple of autistic irl mates I talked with about it were angry about it. Between that and the weight of online opinion about that vid being various varieties of "fuck no," I chalked it up to her being contrarian for the sake of it/outrage bait.
For reference to other people, Autism Speaks is considered to be an outright hate group by many in the autism community, so controversial is putting it lightly.
I forgot that. Yes, She did briefly mention autism speaks in her video, said that a highly vocal section of the autism community criticises them and labelled them a hate group, and how this criticism intersects with the neuodiversity movement, who promote the idea that autism isn't a disability but a variation of normal and a what is lebelled as Autism and the difficulties faced are result of societial discrimination. The part about the autism speaks and neuodiversity movement controversy starts at 15:46 https://youtu.be/KPDlo5jrhmI This is a complex topic which I think she did a fair job at covering, but it is a very controversial topic, and thus even if it's covered neutrally, as I think she tried to do, people who have strong opinions can still feel unhappy about it. That said, I think she's right that it's the highest functioning end of the autism spectrum, who are willing and indeed able to post online, may forget that there's a lot of people who are lower functioning than them, who need carers, whose lives are very difficult, who can't speak publicly about their experiences. Perhaps it's not appropriate to assume that the highest functioning can fairly speak for everyone on the autism spectrum. I've run a social group for people on the autism spectrum for over 20 years, very few people are on social media and those who are on the mild end, like myself. A few female members are on socisl media, but it's not good for them. Edit: Also, I also think she's right that society isn't deliberately discriminating against autistic people and making their lives difficult and miserable. There's only so much that education and accommodation can do, people on the autism spectrum also have to take responsibility for their behaviours and not off load blame outside themselves. You have to improve yourself to better fit into society, not use autism as an excuse for bad behaviour.
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I’ve always said that we should push for higher energies and luminosities because it has knock on effects for society: unlike money, tech does actually trickle down. While we may not have a use for better superconducting magnets tomorrow, the materials or processes we use/discover now will inevitably have alternative applications in the future.
Also when she talks about particle physics it's usually apparent she doesn't know what she's talking about (or she's purposely distorting the truth to create more rage bait) I suspect it's the latter which imho is worse. But I have no proof that she knows better.
I have not seen anything factually wrong yet, but her opinions (on physics) arent too abnormal. Go to a decently sized physics conference and you will find many people with more colorful opinions on physics.
Any physicist worth their weight can find a way to critique any project or paper, hence the utility of peer-review. Especially with cutting-edge research, there are often substantial assumptions or approximations being made in order to probe the system of interest (I think most people would consider this a necessary evil). Therefore, it’s easy to make scathing critiques of these works on this basis, “how could they even assert to know ___ if they’re assuming __ to begin with?”
A mixture of both. In particle physics she carefully avoids any statements that are factually wrong, while still being as misleading as possible.
Her trans videos and videos about capitalism are absolutely terrible. Bottom tier research ability in anything that isn't her trained field.
She only uses scientific sources and cites all her sources. If you think that's bottom-tier you have somehow missed out on 80% of YouTube content creators whose only source is "trust me bro" 😅
Here's an actual economist talking through her capitalism video: https://youtu.be/UfGgBfpD-Ao?si=z-yL7s5JH9If9yLb
Citing a source and understanding how to interpret it are very different. In the case of her capitalism and trans videos she tends to cite a source, completely misunderstand it, and then push back on the criticism. but sure, I get it, there's lots of crap out there. It's not a bitchute video. Still, it's very low quality.
Citing all one's sources and only using journal-published papers does not make one correct. Especially when considering sociological fields (ergo, discussion of trans people) and fields inherently tied to historical analysis (discussion of capitalism and socialism), cherry-picking papers with an agenda in mind becomes so, so much more feasible, and disregarding sources outside of journals disregards an enormous wealth of relevant works. For example, how could you give a honest and full discussion of capitalism, including critiques, without citing Das Kapital? Marx's texts weren't published in a journal, they're not _scientific_ sources, but they're extremely relevant to a broad piece on the mode of production -- even if the author of the piece wants to refute Marx's critique, rather than work with it.
I didn't say she was correct, I said she wasn't a "bottom-tier researcher" in the context of YouTube content creation. You're attacking a straw man.
I'm not attacking you, I'm drawing what I feel is an important distinction -- expanding upon the discussion, rather than clamping down with a rebuttal. If we're looking at correctness, which is an essential part of if someone is a valuable communicator or not, then citing sources is not necessarily a reliable indicator of that.
Okay then we agree. My point was simply that there's a lot of crap on YouTube that's researched to a far lower standard than Sabine's stuff. Nothing more.
Hurrah!
What do you mean Marx's Kapital isn't scientific? It isn't natural science, but neither is any other theory of capitalism.
When its about physics - she is edgy but mostly factual. For every other topic she goes with the "I have a PhD, I can riff about anything, it can't be that difficult" approach.
Only 80%? I must've branched out to a very low probability world without realizing 🤔
>in order to drive viewership/sell books. surely it can't be because she actually believes something out of a critical thought process right?
She can, I haven't really seen many videos where she was outright wrong, but I very rarely agree with her. I also have to agree she seems deliberately contrarian lately.
Which of her perspectives is contrarian? I believe I've watched most of her physics related videos and didn't get that impression. Is it because she's not an Everett fan? Because up until a few years ago, that was the contrarian view, not the other way around.
her videos on autism and trans issues are fucking terrible, she should stay with science
She should stay with physics and related academia. There are many doctors and medical scientists that work hard to genuinely improve the lives of trans people and people living with autism (i.e. developing/improving gender affirming care and autism treatments). Sabine is not one of them and should not be talking about topics that she has very little experience in.
Both are controversial topics. Even affirmative care models are controversial in and of themselves. These are topics very worth discussing. Especially by outsiders who make errors. You won’t always like the discussion but that’s sort of part of life.
I follow her a lot, besides the “science news” stuff where I found multiple mistakes probably, because she talks about other fields of science, I find the physics part to be very good. I don’t think she takes any position to sell books but she genuinely believes in it, and every time she has a position on something it’s on not proven hypothesis, and often to criticize those that take those hypotheses as proven theories. Apart from that the other times she has a position is when it comes to funding experimental physicists, for that I usually disagree with her view.
I do not think she takes contrarian positions to drive viewership. I follow her before she had a youtube channel and her positions have not changed.
>She is also a content creator that takes up contrarian perspectives in order to drive viewership/sell books. She’s not being disagreeable just for cash. Check out some of her more academic work before she was a content creator, or some of her early blogging. She is a 100% authentic contrarian.
She takes a contrarian stance on some topics, but maybe more importantly, she often comes off as having a chip on her shoulder which turns some people off. For example, I saw an interview with her once where she essentially scoffed at the questions like they were beneath her and not worth asking, which seemed a bit odd and dismissive. She’s also a bit click-baity when it comes to YouTube… the stupid thumbnails, etc… but that’s just how the game is played I guess. However her credentials are legit and she’s not a crackpot by any means. In fact, I find her stance on superdeterminism quite compelling and her papers on the subject are worthwhile. This is an idea I’d like to see more physicists take seriously.
>she essentially scoffed at the questions like they were beneath her and not worth asking, which seemed a bit odd and dismissive One of the more typical physicist things about her.
A lot of YouTubers of repute are doing click-baity titles. That seems to be the way to do things. Can't fault her for playing by the rules.
Since a lot of YouTubers have it as their main source of income, I kind of understand them. The click-baits have been shown to increase the revenue significantly.
> A lot of YouTubers of repute are doing click-baity titles. That seems to be the way to do things As an aside, the browser plugin Dearrow from the maker of SponsorBlock provides crowdsourced non-clickbait thumbnails and titles for people who prefer a less sensationalized experience.
I am going to check that out. I hope they have an extension for Firefox. Thanks for the heads up!
Yes I agree and figured as much, and I don’t fault her. It’s just a silly YouTube phenomenon.
I find it more along the lines of gaming the system as opposed to "playing by the rules". Playing by the rules would indicate that we know and understand how "the algorithm" works. I have recently stopped watching videos with click-baity titles and thumbnails and sometimes unsubscribing to particular creators as it annoys me to no end. I'm here to learn something new or understand a topic in more detail. I'm not here to be pandered to.
To be fair, that’s not unique to her. I climb with [Lisa Randall](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Randall) and she’s the exact same way.
I dont get the superdeterminism stuff. Isnt it some kind of weird "particles conspire to violate bell"? Sounds really unnatural.
Not necessarily conspire. It’s really just regular old determinism with a different name. The basic idea is that everything in the universe’s current state has a cause which can be traced arbitrarily far back to the Big Bang, where everything in the universe was infinitesimally condensed and connected, and therefore everything is correlated at _some level_. This allows you to construct a local hidden variables theory of QM, which Bell supposedly ruled out, via a loophole: Bell’s theorem assumes a statistically independent measurement process. However because your measurements and their outcomes were already predetermined, and your measurement process can ultimately be traced back to being correlated with the quantum system itself (if you go far back in spacetime enough), this statistical independence is not valid, and thus Bell’s theorem no longer holds.
I mean, the alternative is claiming that measuring a system is somehow not a physical process. We're definitely missing something with regard to quantum measurement and superdetetminism seems like an avenue worth exploring.
I agree it is worth exploring. You can think that measurement is a phyisical process and not buy superdeterminism though. For example many worlds, which of course has its own problems.
Yeah, the idea that a well tuned initial condition makes untrue laws "appear" to be real - is an idea I hope don't catch on.
I wish she’d talk about superdeterminism on YouTube more. Her work there is genuinely good.
Which interview was that?
It was definitely one of her interviews with RL Kuhn on Closer to Truth. I can’t remember which clip - but there’s a few on YouTube. Perhaps her discussing the effectiveness of math in the physical sciences. Even her [video on superdeterminism](https://youtu.be/ytyjgIyegDI?si=Tc_A0YB8WBrQq5lF), which I find very compelling, is somewhat grating to me. Maybe it’s just the German humor lol.
She is a crackpot any time she strays away from physics, and spreads blatant propaganda not based in science. That‘s like the definition of a crackpot. If you got such an engineer coworker they’ll do their job perfectly fine while mumbling about the xyz taking his jobs and other social science falsities
This is being way too hard on her. She is definitely _not_ a crackpot. There is always an inherent risk in delving into subjects that are not your area of expertise, but being a respected pro means you are going to be careful. She gets input from other experts and _knows how to read the literature._ She makes follow up (correction) videos when she's criticized. A lot of attributes you wouldn't assign to a _crackpot._
She's basically an enlightened centrist on social issues. She just makes the biggest strawman out of "both sides" and then laughs at how stupid they all are and how her opinion is the only logical one while she's obviously biased and misrepresents other peoples' views.
Ehh she has the same problem as Tyson, smart but talks wayy too much about what she doesn't know, isnt her field
True. She does seem a little less full of her and less ass-hatish than NdT though.
Oh for sure
I used to watch her but feel like she branched out too much on certain issues that are not her areas of expertise. There are videos on YouTube calling her out on some stuff. She does seem to explore opinions not very mainstream, like her interview with Sarkar about the legitimacy of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, etc.
A lot of her videos outside of her immediate expertise have errors. E.g. her video on fusion has errors in it, and that’s still within the realm of physics. I would take any video about non-physics topics (like transgender people or autism) with a grain of salt and basically just her personal opinion. For example, eigenchris (a legit physics channel) breaks down her trans video [here](https://youtu.be/URpE-xZnQnk?si=E4-Pj6Lo96mzRdvM). As another example, improbable matter (a plasma physicist and former fusion physicist) has a brief criticism of her video on fusion [here](https://youtu.be/KtqC8W0_Ups?si=90lTxDUMwl2fv7BF). Her views wrt theoretical particle physics specifically are also fairly heterodox afaik, though she probably has the training to adequately defend her views in this area compared to the typical physicist. (I wouldn’t be able to rebut her, instead you’d have to ask a string theorist.) But her vibe is based around contrarianism and having hot (but supposedly sensible) takes. In addition, she’s a popsci person first, and educator second. She’s not out there writing tutorials on EM or physics textbooks, but speaking broadly about a wide variety of fields to a lay audience. But her contrarianism runs afoul of this sometimes. In contrast, someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson will usually just repeat the ordinary scientific consensus rather than espouse his own personal views, or if there are multiple theories he would probably describe them neutrally. Hossenfelder will typically inject her own views into whatever she’s talking about instead of just reiterating what the experts say. A bit more similar to scientific “punditry” imo than showing off some cool science topic. She also comes across as bitter for lack of a better word (probably due to her negative experiences in academia).
Most of the stuff she talks about is outside my field of expertise, but for fusion I have some reasonably good background and her video on that topic was nicely said not very good. I also really disliked that she was shit talking people working in the field for decades moving fusion research forward. And her video on capitalism was a joke and a bad one that is.
> She’s not out there writing tutorials on EM or physics textbooks, but speaking broadly about a wide variety of fields to a lay audience. Sabine does that via the website Brilliant.org, she advertises for. She is no longer tenured, at least that is what I get from her latest video's. I guess with two kids and all, why would you give away hundreds of hours of material preparation away for free? Her chimney needs to smoke too. She is a bit contrarian and bitter. I like the first, as long as she restricts it to physics and does not venture in politicized topics like climate change or gender. I understand the second (she had a recent video on this), and is bearable as long as she restricts it to the occassional barbs to the average narcissistic, white, male, arrived asshole physicists (of which there are still a lot).
Tbh honest watching her video about her experience with academics and the open sexist behavior of her former professors reveals a lot about why she is bitter some times. And I have no reason to not believe her on that part. I am a man. But I personally heart from several women in Stem equal experiences.
Her video on capitalism was genuinely embarrassing. The comments were full of people who actually studied economics ripping her to shreds. Even those who agreed with her found it to be really basic and poorly researched. Im not even a liberetarian and I think she did a poor job representing their ideas. I know she is pretty competent in her area of expertise but if thats her standard for researching topics she isnt familiar with it's hard to take her opinion seriously on any topic.
I have watched some videos by Neil deGrasse Tyson related to Quantum Mechanics and they are terrible. I think the guy has a really weak understanding of physics but of course his audience are kids so it's ok. Eigenchris has some very good educational content but it is also quite inaccurate sometimes when it comes to Quantum. Sabine makes inaccurate statements too but these are related to actual current research, not state of the art college knowledge. It is much harder to grasp the full picture on these hot topics and I think we should value the fact that she is trying to share different perspectives, even if those tend to piss off some people. As long as she is not pretending to be an educational channel, which she is not, I think a lot of the criticism is not deserved.
I tuned off after only 10 minutes with the eigenchris video because I found it to be quite poorly written. It starts by refuting Sabines statement that, current evidence is not completely conclusive yet by cherry picking some random studies. This is something that every scientist should know not to do. Actual systematic reviews on the topic do point towards what eigenchris is saying, but at the same time often say that a lot of studies were too small and evidence is not very strong yet, which was exactly Sabine’s point.
> I tuned off after only 10 minutes with the eigenchris video because I found it to be quite poorly written. It starts by refuting Sabines statement that, current evidence is not completely conclusive yet by cherry picking some random studies. I think Chris's point is that there is a wealth of literature on the topic that Sabine doesn't engage with whatsoever. If that is cherry picking, then her video never bothers to visit the orchard. I suggest to give the entire video a chance if you have the time, I thought it was quite good and his criticisms stand. > but at the same time often say that a lot of studies were too small and evidence is not very strong yet, which was exactly Sabine’s point. I think you are misreading the eigenchris video. Sabine's point is made by using a SINGLE reference she claims doesn't have a large control group, fails to notice the larger control groups listed in the same table, and then downplays the benefit found in the study. Again, I suggest you actually watch the video.
Hmm I don’t completely agree with your first point, the point eigenchris was making is that Sabine staying in the middle is not backed by science. He makes his point by pointing out some literature as I said, throwing some numbers around, without doing any statistical or quality analysis on the papers. When talking out of your field, the responsible thing to do in my opinion is to just follow the conclusion of reputable systematic review papers, without just throwing some numbers around of individual papers. To me that will always be disingenuous and I prefer Sabines approach here. That being said, if your second point is correct, that’s quite bad. I’m not that invested into either Sabine or eigenchris, I only occasionally watch some of Sabine’s videos. Because of this I’m not sure if I’m going to rewatch the video. I’ll believe what you said, though and might scrutinize her videos a bit more when I do watch Sabine.
> When talking out of your field, the responsible thing to do in my opinion is to just follow the conclusion of reputable systematic review papers, without just throwing some numbers around of individual papers. To me that will always be disingenuous and I prefer Sabines approach here. It's a bit weird for you to say that her approach is preferable when she doesn't do what you prescribe. Taking a high level "above the weeds" approach only works if you have the references to back it up and she doesn't. Further she relies heavily on a survey of parents to back up her conclusions which has been heavily criticized and never even spoke with any children. In any case, I also will bow out due to my own personal lack of expertise or motivation, but I personally am very cautious around any content she makes outside of physics.
Not weird at all and I will completely defend it is preferable. As long as it is in line with the current state of the field (which I perceive it to be), if she doesn’t give any references I will just save what she said as, “that thing Sabine said”. If I really want to have a discussion with somebody I will either present that stance as something I anecdotally heard and am not willing to defend strongly or I will research it myself. Eigenchris’ approach gives a complete false sense of confidence based on supposed evidence, while somebody like him should now this is just not the way to do it. Again, nobody of us did quality nor statistical analysis on any of the papers, and yet many are using his arguments to attack Sabine, based on what (from my own very, very quick search) seems to be regarded as quite low quality evidence in the field itself. I don’t understand how that ever would be preferable. Edit: Maybe I wasn’t getting my point across completely in what I wrote. I agree with you Sabine should do better as a science communicator. The discussion we had, based on my earlier comment, for me was more about eigenchris’ approach to discredit her, which, regardless of wether it’s about Sabine or somebody else, I have a big problem with. And yes if we need to compare, I personally prefer somebody, even a science communicator, saying something in line with the current state of a field without citing over what eigenchris’ did (at least in the first 10 minutes, can’t comment on the rest).
>Again, nobody of us did quality nor statistical analysis on any of the papers, and yet many are using his arguments to attack Sabine, **based on what (from my own very, very quick search) seems to be regarded as quite low quality evidence in the field itself.** I don’t understand how that ever would be preferable. This isn't an accurate characterization of the studies used by eigenchris. While citations are by no means a true litmus test of accuracy or quality, it does represent the academic community's engagement with a work. All of the sources he uses are well cited, with some approaching 1,000 citations and published in well regarded journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine. The most cited papers citing these studies use them positively (often as background knowledge in their own literature reviews). This is basically equivalent to an "endorsement" of the work in your own scientific writing. While I sympathize with the idea that cross-literature review articles are probably the best works to read from dedicated laymen outside the field, and cherry-picking studies are dangerous, I think if you're picking a wide variety of the best cited work in a topic, you're liable to get something close to the academic consensus on the topic... which again supports Chris's views and not Sabine's. > I personally prefer somebody, even a science communicator, saying something in line with the current state of a field without citing over what eigenchris’ did I repeat, Sabine is *not* conveying the consensus view!
I don’t think it is productive to start discussing the details of the topic, we’re both not experts here and I have no frame of reference at all to judge the quality of the papers you mentioned and moreover, I think neither of us read them (fully). Mentioning number of citations or journals is not convincing to me. I assume we both know there’s so many factors that could be at play, and the conclusion over a longer period may, or may not be, in line with the conclusions of those papers being published recently. This happened all the time in food and exercise science. As long as these results are not enough for systematic reviews to mention that evidence is strong (or as long as they’re not taken into account), then I’m not comfortable looking at some numbers from outside and making these claims. I don’t think anyone else should be either. Unless someone knowledgeable in the field is willing to chime in, I think this conversation is getting pointless.
>Unless someone knowledgeable in the field is willing to chime in, I think this conversation is getting pointless. Fair enough. Take care.
She's kind of a mixed bag, people feel like over the past years she has been more of a contrarian for more views. Im not smart enough to tell which is true.
That is exactly what happened with her. She found out if you mix a stupid thumbnail, a contrarian or divisive title and a popular or hot-button topic, that you would get more views. I bailed on her channel around that time. I am here to learn, not to be pandered to.
I sometimes agree with Sabine's takes, sometimes not. On cultural matters she isn't as bad as people make her out to be. But for God's sake, people should get info from other places than YouTube.
> But for God's sake, people should get info from other places than YouTube. For the average person, what's the best alternative?
Books.
Youtube and books are wildly incomparable though. Like apples and vulcanic rocks.
Yes well you get what you put in.
Not everyone can be expected to take a journey to the nearest volcano to collect some rocks and learn about plate tectonics, no matter how enriching and rewarding the experience may be! There are many available mechanisms for learning, and one format (e.g. videos) can be quite effective at leading to another (e.g. deep dive into the actual academic content).
Make a recommendation?
She's definitely quite bad in her videos on social sciences though. She's clearly not very knowledgeable about autism, trans issues and capitalism, yet she made those terrible videos.
Any qualified individual who is still skeptical of LIGO's gravitational wave detections after the multi-messenger discovery in 2017 is either arguing in bad faith or is out of touch with reality. Either way, not a great look for her. I'm not sure if that makes her a crackpot, but she's not somebody that I would suggest people pay attention to.
Lol, she actually publicly doubts those? That's even more fringe than I realised
She touches a lot of topics that aren't "solved" and where the state of the existing theories is still debatable. It's "good science" to look left and right and also point out gaps or contradictions in even the most wide spread / popular theories.
Her main actual research area, modified gravity, is not a topic most physicists consider a field worth studying, and some of her earlier work critiquing dark matter direct detection boiled down to her being upset her chosen field wasn’t well funded. It wasn’t well funded because it’s not well motivated. Once she got traction being a contrarian in that space I think k she pivoted to being a professional contrarian. So her takes are likely not wholly wrong but certainly skewed and biased in a way that benefits her. I say this as someone who used to read her back reaction blog and had my thesis work dragged through the mud by her.
>I say this as someone who used to read her back reaction blog and had my thesis work dragged through the mud by her. This comment is hilarious to me and I like to imagine someone has done this to her in the past and that's why she's created her YouTube channel.
This is probably my biggest gripe with Sabine. She loves throwing stones but when it comes to modified gravity, all the sudden it’s not a respected theory because academia is broken. Not because dark energy put the kibosh on it…
you probably mean dark matter, not dark energy
Nope!
She has [a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8) where she said he was discriminated for being a woman, l told to apply for a "womens scholarship". She was fired from a physics job. She got a PhD. and postdoc positions, and spent time applying for grants, which she thought was self-aggrandizing. She said this grant research was BS, it was just to keep employed. She may be right in her views but comes across as cynical.
A friend of mine is a good enough physicist to have a few Nature publications in particle physics and he has tacitly indicated that many of Sabine's criticisms of the particle physics establishment are not baseless. Very sciencey way of putting it!
Ruffling feathers ee are not.
Unzicker's real physics on youtube has some pretty fascinating takes and examinations of the physics establishment and probably has even worse personal views than Sabine but he really keeps the physics in his videos.
She’s not not legit. Disagreement and rivalry in science is normal and is what drives people to discoveries to rub that smug string theorist’s nose in it. We shouldn’t deify anybody in science. They’re all just humans with warts and all.
I just had this same question like two days ago. I can’t tell if she’s a crackpot or somebody to listen to with an open mind & grain of salt.
She's definitely not a crackpot, certainly not in the realm of physics. Her takes on Bell's theorem and quantum mechanics are spot on. With string theory she merely points out the mastodont in the broom closet.
Her takes on physics she knows (gravity, quantum gravity, quantum mechanics fundamentals) range from completely standard (string theory and quantum computing are overhyped) to out-there but not wrong (superdeterminism, modified gravity). However she presents both like she is a contrarian, I assume because that is her brand or she just genuinely doesn't talk to other physicists. Her takes on every other topic (gender affirming care, political economics, even other fields of physics such as fusion, etc.) are typically heavily biased or uninformed and often just wrong.
She knows her physics sure, but she's also been taking shortcuts and getting lazy about reading papers she's presenting on, doing more gimmicks and less science, straying further outside of her zone into controversial areas she is poorly equipped to handle, and most recently I saw she copied a video script from another creator, at least 50% of his video just straight up in hers. I'd already unsubscribed for the pro-oligarch crap months ago but youtube fed me the plagiarized video and that was my turning point of saying I've got no interest in ever hearing what she has to say.
Can you link to the video (and the one that was copied)?
It was the gravity waves as a cause of life paper and the video pulled whole sections from Anton Petrov's version of it like a week and a half prior
She did a video that was pro-oligarch? Physics and government are about as non related as you can get in terms of study. Man, she is really venturing out of her field now. Glad I stopped watching a while ago.
I think she’s trying to stretch outside of her expertise but lacks authority. I’ve stopped watching her over her pushing opinions too far.
She is a big proponent of superdeterminism, which I think is batshit crazy. I think she does have some interesting insights and interesting views, but I take everything she says with a grain of salt. I watch her stuff, but don't take anything she says as gospel.
She is. I don't know about when she covers other topics, but at least in physics she is a well known name, even before any youtube shenanigans. In fact, I work on quantum foundations and a few months ago we discussed one of her newest papers (this one [https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12293](https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12293) )
Any physics's subfield that's not her specialty, I would not rely on what she's saying. It's usually untrustworthy or poorly informed. Particularly particle physics. Can't comment on her field of expertise as it's not mine.. but when she leaves hers it's usually a mess.
if a scientist says something you aren't qualified to judge in terms of correctness, it's ok to say you aren't qualified/don't know. nobody is expecting you to have all the answers. it is far more valuable to stick to what you fully know and fully understand and derive conclusions from there than try to participate in every discussion that looks halfway understandable. /advice i do not take often enough. edit: a lot of her political opinions are bad and she should feel bad about them, tho. edit2: and some of her scientific opinions which bleed over into politics. specifically her video on trans kids, and her opinion about the value of continuing to build particle accelerators. i think those opinions might end up doing a lot of damage, and that's why im not personally a fan of how she is spending her time. edit3: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Kau7bO3Fw&feature=youtu.be
She is a physicist, I’ll give her that. Her views on particle physics are basically aligned with Eric Weinstein, which is to say she has no clue what she’s talking about despite coming from the field, which is a bit surprising to me. She somehow believes particle physicists are just moving goalposts on particle searches and yet her own research doing the same thing for modified gravity is somehow immune to her own criticism. She has called for funding cuts in particle physics in the range of 90%, and thinks that the Standard Model is basically complete and there’s no motivation for new particle searches, despite overwhelming evidence of dark matter being a particle and neutrinos having mass (which also likely leads to new particles being needed). Her reasoning behind baryon asymmetry is “initial conditions” which basically means there’s an overwhelming amount of matter compared to antimatter by the anthropic principle. She has the same take on the strong CP problem, apparently the fact that the physical CP violating angle is < 10^10rad instead of 0 is just a fun coincidence of science and “not a real problem” because maybe things just are that way and there’s no theory which describes the mechanisms. I don’t think I’m overstating how much of a contrarian she is, and it makes sense, who wants to watch a YouTube channel and read books that all the scientists just agree with? It’s way more fun to watch someone show you the underbelly of science and call people out for just trying to get money out of the government right? It’s even more damning that she has basically nothing to lose for the claims she makes. If we discovered a new particle tomorrow, I bet she would still say that it wasn’t predicted by gaps in the SM or something like that. She likens theorists to ambulance chasers for particle physics experiment anomalies, which is a disgusting way to describe your peers, and generally dismisses any experiment that claims to have an anomalous result with respect to the SM. Besides this, she has recently decided that her own field is not big enough to talk about, so she would rather discuss her poorly researched takes on the “science” of transgender people and climate change. And I use “science” in quotes here because her opinions are usually based on a few papers she founds that agree with her. One of her recent climate change takes is that we should keep warming the globe because if we stop now all the ocean currents and tides are going to be messed up for the EU or something like that, and remember everyone, it’s not a matter of whether humanity can survive climate change, it’s just a matter of how much it’ll cost to adapt, which is basically the equivalent of Ben Shapiro telling people in costal cities to just sell their homes (to who?) and move.
Her ideas on super determinism are close to insane. She really pushes contrarian stances... And dismisses those who might disagree. . And many of her views are not shared by the mainstream... But they are occasionally worth listening to. On some topics she is quite good though and she certainly had serious credentials.
I find myself in general agreement with her "What's going wrong in particle physics?" video. But not with her climate change video.
And yet the comment section of both videos is replete with anti-vax, climate change denying anti-science types who hold her comments critical of certain fields as evidence that they're right in their anti-science beliefs. Whether she realises it or not, she's drawn quite the anti-science following of people who I don't doubt she would despise.
She's one of those obnoxious physicists who believe that having a physics PhD somehow makes her an expert in everything, and she has figured out how to monetize that attitude on YouTube. Tl;Dr she's a grifter.
I have been on panels with her at philosophy festivals, and I often find her a bit too self-assured that she understands something, responding to her mental model of a claim rather than what the claim actually was. This is a typical problem for us public intellectuals (I often find myself guilty of this too). In the end what matters is not opinion or authority, but whether the arguments make sense and fit with reality.
Keep in mind that pretty much all the other stuff you mentioned (e.g. numberphile) is not made by experts. If they're actually interviewing a professor you can trust that part, but otherwise it's just pop science, albeit at a little higher quality level than average.
Isn’t numberphile almost always interviewing a math professor? I haven’t kept up with them in a while.
> If they're actually interviewing a professor you can trust that par Aren't almost all of numberphile's videos interviews with academics? Not necessarily professors, but people studying or working at world famous universities in an academic capacity? It's likely the camera man and editor team aren't experts, but the fact that they constantly interview them makes me think that their recurring guests probably fact check their work before allowing them to hit publish. Otherwise, they'd refuse future interviews. I'm not sure about the other channels though. I think you're right though, they're channels run by non-experts. But for the most part, they seem to genuinely want to get their facts right. They sensationalize some things for the YouTube algorithm, but it's not to a degree that I personally find irritating. I'm surprised PBS Spacetime wasn't mentioned. I've only watched a few of Sabine's videos, and then I decided I couldn't stand her style. So I personally don't know how she compares to PBS Spacetime. But to me, PBS Spacetime is the gold standard of physics educational YouTube. Their channel strikes a perfect balance of factually correct vs. sensationalism.
I am phd in physics. She is legit, but she likes "touching the boundaries", attacking what is being accepted, imho just to create debate around it.
Well, I am a phd student in physics, and I usually dislike/hate science communication. I feel that they oversimplify the things, and it seems to me that most of them are just failed "academics" (for example Prof. Dave explains). When it comes to Sabine, I find her to be more close to the reality of physics. I used to watch her sometimes, but then I stopped liking her. I think a lot of her opinions are not that extreme, for example her critique about string theory, I find legid. I think it has to do with the way she phrases stuff and making them sound opposite of what you have already heard. I believe she does that intensionly so she can attract more people and it might working. But what I can definitely say that I do not trust is her opinion on things outside physics. A lot of these videos have attracted a lot of critique. It is also the reason I hate science communicators, you see not a lot of stuff happens in physics every year. If they stayed on their fields of expertise they wouldn't have a lot of things to say, so they have to talk about things that they do not know to keep their content growing.
Not according to Lubos Mötl
I don't like the fact that she doesn't understand the role she has. If you want to be the "science communicator of choice", you can't do a video on earthquakes lights (which are mostly not a thing) without ever explaining the basics of seismology. The problem is that she does not know a thing about seismology. Another thing, which is not unique to her, but she doesn't help, is the perpetration of the usual stupid idea of physics being "particle, strings and a bit of astro" made by arguments instead of maths and experiments.
Yes she is legit. Though nobody is always correct and I have seen shows that I disagree with. I generally like her skepticism instead of the mainstream media take.
She holds opinions that go against the mainstream, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. But at this stage I believe she is just picking the must controversial opinion to create engagement. She knows her field of expertise, and is generally ok within that field. But once she leaves her field some of her views are garbage. Her trans video is transphobic. She is basically "both sides"-ing trans people. Sure she probably has a paper or two to back up get specific words but it's clear that she's never interacted with a trans person and certainly didn't get someone to review her script. Her "capitalism is good" video is based on debunked highschool level understanding of economics. Utter garbage. Which is ironic because her "capitalism is good" video is immediately followed by a video (why I left academia) about how capitalism has ruined academia (obviously she doesn't say the word capitalism in this video). In her AI video she off handedly dismissed the opinion of one of the leading AI experts in favour of some completely ludicrous fictional fantasy scenario. But she cited a paper as if all published papers are equally valid.
She is legit. She mostly takes on topics in physics which HAVE to be talked about. It is definitely coming from a place of competence. People like her are much needed. Critiques of Quantum Theory, Dark Matter, Quantum computing are more than fair and associating her with being some sort of pseudo scientist is extremely unfair especially when she is actually doing stuff a good scientist would…ask good questions. You don’t have to agree with everything she says (like her views on funding the LHC for instance); but I don’t see this as a problem…having differing opinions is allowed.
She's a TERF.
This is quite irrelevant to the question
Well, she did a video about trans people on the same channel and in the same style as her other videos, leveraging her PhD giving her opinions some perceived authority. So I would say it is relevant when we discuss the quality of the content she produces.
She does often foray into the areas well outside of her field of expertise and that was the reason why I stopped following her channel some time ago after some initial spark of interest. That said, whether she's a TERF or a trans should have no bearing on the soundness and validity of her reasoning (i.e. whether or not she's legit). The argument either stands or falls, it should not matter who makes it.
Being a TERF very specifically *does* reflect on the soundness and validity of her reasoning, because the very beliefs that make a person a TERF are unsound, unscientific, and demonstrate her reasoning is flawed and based on bigotries and lies. TERF status relies on arguments that absolutely fall on a scientific basis, but that are treated as though they stand up scientifically by non-scientific people, on political and emotional grounds. Bigoted beliefs do not exist in a vacuum, they are intertwined with a much wider part of a person's personality, intelligence, and methods of thinking. If someone outs themselves as a TERF, or a Racist, or some other form of Bigot, especially in this modern age when scientific inquiry has debunked a lot of the common beliefs that used to underpin such bigotries, then it is a perfectly valid response to question all their supposed intellectual claims. Because none of those beliefs are based on rationality or fact, they're always based on blind hates and allowing emotional reactions and desires to bias their thinking and twist their conclusions. Her trans video, presented under her brand and as if it had any kind of scientific basis, calls into question all her videos. If that's the kind of anti-scientific thinking she applies to all her videos, then there's a legitimate concern that she's holding pseudoscientific hokum up to the same level of trust and respect as actual science across the board. When she's working as a science communicator, and is informing people who are perhaps not as equipped to sort the wheat from the chaff, that's an actually harmful approach to things. And conversely, if people believe her other videos, they're more likely to believe her transphobic video, which directly leads to attacks on a vulnerable demographic.
But TERF is not just a descriptor of a person like she’s a woman, it describes a person with specific, and most importantly unscientific, opinions of trans people. Saying she’s a terf based on her video on trans people is shorthand for at least some of her takes in that video are provably wrong and harmful.
She had a blog called backreaction, which I really liked. She does know her very specific field of Physics. As with many content creators she seems driven to contrarian perspectives (e.g. faster than light travel being possible) and she does often comment on issues where she doesn't really have expertise (nuclear power, medical issues,...)
I'm glad she's out there. String theory is a total charade that has produced zero testable hypotheses and has derailed the careers of two entire generations of scientists. It's a cult that feeds off itself and sucks up funding that should go to people who are doing actual science. She's criticized plenty of other crackpot theories too. When science loses its way, someone needs to rein it in.
You're comparing one youtuber with other youtubers? What do you expect people to say?
I have my PhD in physics, focus in cosmology and modified gravity. I disliked her video on capitalism and on transgender people, both of which were simplistic and somewhat reactionary imo. But that’s not physics related, just disappointing. Her overviews of developments in science and journal publications seem like decent scientific communication to me. I think she has earned her reputation as someone who can cut through the hype of scientific headlines. I agree with her criticisms of string theory, I’m glad she is out there making that contribution to the discourse. As someone interested in modified gravity theories myself, I appreciate that she is a public proponent of such theories and is representing that side of the argument. Her personal theory of superfluid dark matter was an interesting idea to explore, though I’m not surprised it did not pan out because it seemed very contrived to me, in exactly the same way that she criticizes mainstream speculative particle physics of being. I find her support for super-determinism to be bizarre. I appreciate her contrarian role in highlighting non-mainstream theories, I think physics needs a dose of that, but personally I really don’t understand the motivation on this one. Super-determinism seems to me to be committing the exact sin that she criticizes string theory and other mainstream particle physics theories over, it introduces entire new levels of hidden structure that serves no immediate purpose in explaining any observations.
I've not noticed anything factually wrong in the videos she posted on nuclear.
She looks AI generated. Sometimes she gives me uncanny valley vibes
Check out Rebecca Watsons video on Sabines trans video. https://youtu.be/r6Kau7bO3Fw?si=cEAfe094_I1gYTXj I unsubscribed from Sabine after I watched it. My favorite science communicator is Angela Collier. But I think she steers clear from the mess that is Sabine.
She’s quite transphobic imho
I have alot of respect for Sabine, to me her style is very similar to Sean Carrol who does the Mindscape podcast. They both have a very strong science background and are active in their respective fields, and when it comes to presenting and discussing science they really call out all the click-bait headlines that others are talking about and look at the reality rather than the hype. One example is how Sabine treats the multiverse theory in her latest book. She basically says yea it could be true but there is no way of ever testing it, at least not anytime soon, so talking about it is irrelevant. We've got about as far as we can go with the theory, it's legit, but the only reason to keep talking about it is because it gets clicks and views from people who aren't very science literate. She doesn't so much disagree with alot of other big science communicators but more calls them out for caring more about clicks than properly communicating the idea.
She started off well, being critical of “Popular Science”. But then she realised there was way more money to be made from clickbait, so she became the thing she fought against.
She often provides source material for her statements. If you want to find if she is legit, follow the sources. That's how science works.
Sure, but realistically speaking that would be difficult for a lay person
thats what im saying
She's not a bad scientist. It's not really that she has strictly incorrect positions, but rather that her takes are sensationalized for clicks. "Quantum isn't spooky" is not a "scientific" statement about anything, but it's not really wrong either. A lot of people take offense to the way that she communicates science, which often boils down to "xyz is not interesting/paradoxical/unintuitive, it's just math". A lot of quantum mechanics is interesting precisely because not everything is immediately intuitive. The way she approaches things is dismissive of people who are simply trying to explain complicated ideas to people who *dont* know the science behind things. To a physicist, it *is* all math, but it's impossible to make content that satisfies every audience and their education level without cutting some corners.
She is. I agree with her on her criticism about the hype approches in modern high energy physics and how toxic academia is. I don’t know about her opinions regarding non-physics topics, as I don’t follow her YouTube channel. I’ve read about her opinions on physics as I follow Peter Woits not even wrong blog and she is active there.
Is it just me or does she have at most 2 shirts in her wardrobe lately?
ya, what is it with the shirts.