A favorite pastime of scientists of all ilks is to discuss the pros and cons of string theory. Of course, very few scientsts are equiped to properly critique string theory (myself included), yet a large number of scientists are very sceptical. You might just say that “they smell a rat.” Why might this be? Take a look at this wikipedia article which is an attack on a different proto-theory of quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity. In the link, the authors are clearly string theory biased. And they put forth such great arguments as….loop quantum gravity is bad because it only talks about four dimensional spacetime…loop quantum gravity is bad because it does not allow an infinite variety of new fields and objects….loop quantum gravity is bad because it, oh my god, only purports to be a theory of gravity….loop quantum gravity is bad because it doesn’t predict any new particles…loop quantum gravity does not produce any new mathematics…etc., etc. It’s arguments like these which give string theory a bad name. There are good reasons to be skeptical of loop quantum gravity, but the arguments put forth from this stringy perspective are simply absurd.
O brave new quantum world!
It is a wiki, why not include the good reasons yourself? I’d be interested in reading what you might have to say.
Is the skimeter based on days of skiing?
We had snow last night, but it didn’t reach the ground.
The statements you posted fall into the same category as arguments about earthquake prediction and hazard statistics, I think.
The skimeter is indeed measured in days. Hmm, let me fix that.
Hey Dave – If you’re looking to remove the standard `not qualified to have a real opinion about string theory’ caveat from your posting, there finally seems to be a route into the theory for the casually curious. While browsing the Cambridge University Press bookstore a couple of days ago, I came across Barton Zwiebach’s “A First Course in String Theory” which is based, believe it or not, on an undergraduate course he teaches at MIT. The mysteries of extra dimensions, T-duality and microstate counting in extremal black holes are all presented in disorientingly accessible language. Maybe six months from now I might even have an informed opinion…