“Gina Says”

In the summer of 2006 two books attacking string theory, a prominent theory in physics, appeared: Peter Woit's "Not Even Wrong" and Lee Smolin's "The Trouble with Physics". A fierce public debate, much of it on weblogs, ensued.

Gina is very curious about science blogs. Can they be useful for learning about or discussing science? What happens in these blogs and who participates in them? Gina is eager to learn the issues and to form her own opinion about the string theory controversy. She is equipped with some academic background, including in mathematics, and has some familiarity with academic life. Her knowledge of physics is derived mainly from popular accounts. Gina likes to debate and to argue. She is fascinated by questions about rationality and philosophy, and was exposed to various other scientific controversies in the past.

This book uses the blog debate on string theory to discuss blogs, science, and mathematics. Meandering over various topics from children's dyscalculia to Chomskian linguistics, the reader may get some sense of the chaotic and often confusing scientific experience. The book tries to show the immense difficulty involved in getting the factual matters right, and interpreting fragmented and partial information.

Sample Chapter(s)
1. Extraordinary Claims (1 MB)

• NOT EVEN WRONG: The Blog of Peter Woit:
  • Extraordinary Claims
  • Gödel's Theorem and Logic
  • Obviously I Disagree
  • "It is Not in the Cards"
  • Pre Review and Riskless Risks
  • Scientists are Paid to be Gullible
  • The Poincaré Conjecture and Christos Dimitriou Papakyriakopoulos
  • Useful Divergence
  • Why Just Two-Dimensional Models?
  • Can Philosophy of Science Help Doing Science?
  • Referees and Ethics
  • It is All a Fantasy: Cole's Review
  • Expelled
  • H. S. M. Coxeter, Polytopes and Mirror Symmetry
  • The Future of String Theory
  • Interlude: Silly String Wars in Jerusalem
• The n-Category Café:
  • From Perception of Mathematics to Dyscalculia
  • From Lehrer's Song on Continuous Functions, to Baez's Lyrics on Elliptic PDE
  • Foundations
  • Computers, Categories, Analogies, and Greatness
• Asymptotia and Lee Smolin's "The Trouble with Physics":
  • Can Strings be Fractals? and All Sorts of Other Things
  • The Trouble with Physics: Gina's Sixteen Objections
  • TTWP: Mandelstam; Optimism
  • How to Measure Progress?
  • Maldacena
  • The Overall Evaluation of String Theory
  • High Risk Endeavors for the Young
  • Scientists and Mountain Climbers
  • How to Treat Fantastic Claims by Great People
  • Sociology of Universities
  • The String Theory Community
  • The Finiteness-of-String-Theory War
  • A Mathematician's Solution to the Proliferation Problem
  • Shocking Revelations
  • How to Debate Beauty?