The Quantum Pontiff

The Physical Review response of a few days ago reminded me of this favorite quote, part of which I read at at the celebration we had after my dad passed away,

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere gobs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere.” I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part — perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? – R.P. Feynman

Here is a final paragraph I wrote (CTC = closed timelike curve):

Finally, we would not be honest if we did not end this paper with the caveat that this work is at best a creature of eager speculation. Without a theory of quantum gravity, we cannot know whether CTCs can exist let alone whether they can be generated within the confines of the such a theory. Practical considerations are humorous at best. The surprising answer that quantum computation in the presence of CTCs is a powerful new model of quantum computation gives us reason, however, to pause and ponder the implications.

and the Physical Review editors replied with:

The wording of the last paragraph of your paper does not conform to the presentation of Physical Review A. We prefer literal descriptions and suggest the following: End the first sentence with “… at best based on eager speculation.” Remove the penultimate sentence entirely.

Is it any wonder that science is full of dull writing and that the public’s perception of science is that of a bunch of boring egomaniacs jargonizing endlessly about trivialities?