From Osher Doctorow

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Madison Avenue Propaganda in Theoretical Physics
Copyright By Owner Osher Doctorow Ph.D.
First Published 2005

Prugovecki (see my last few threads) as well as Paul Dirac were quite
concerned about the "Madison Avenue" propaganda in theoretical physics
that characterized the second half of the 20th Century and which issued
from especially the younger crowd of insecure but super-upwardly-mobile
physicists. Before roughly 1950, it was common to decide theoretical
and experimental issues by relatively reasoned debate, although
admittedly the lack of mathematical probability training of Einstein,
Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and Bohr seriously damaged some of their
arguments. But after 1950, as Prugovecki especially tells in
excruciating detail, things were decided by propaganda to an amazing
degree, including press conferences, interviews by columnists, popular
books and their "plugging" by young physicists, extremely biased and
"packed" forums, forums controlled by biased moderators, bias in
publish-or-perish, control of funds by networking "young lions" or
"young maestros", vehement insult of "enemies" in physics and
mathematics, vehement insult of mathematicians by young physics lions,
vehement insult of philosophy by the same, and on and on.

Canada was not guiltless in this process, and Lee Smolin's Perimeter
Institute and Smolin's own "counter-propaganda" for LQG (Loop Quantum
Gravity) together with Abhay Ashtekar's and Carlo Rovelli's represented
a mixture of old-timer and young/middle aged propaganda. But Canada
doesn't have the Madison Avenue money to a comparable extent, and
Canada has the U.K. type educational system in which a tradition of
making decisions by truth and knowledge rather than by Materialist
Greed and Power and Sensation and Nepotism/Networking have tended to
prevail (although Prugovecki considered that the Madison Avenue model
was spreading into Europe in later years).
Prugovecki had some hope that in the last decade of the 20th Century
some sanity was entering the picture, and in Citebase at least there is
a wider expression of viewpoints without so much propaganda beginning
usually around 1990, but very little Courage or concern about comparing
Nonconformist and Conformist schools and approaches. It is almost a
"sin" on arXiv or Citebase for anybody to directly compare
Superstring/Brane, LQG, Quantum Geometry, Algebraic QFT, Axiomatic QFT,
etc.

On the other side of the coin, the USA is one of the very, very few
nations with the brains and courage to have and use an effective
Self-Defense or Military Science and to protect small nations of
historical Victims like Israel (Jews being the oldest oppressed
surviving Ethnic minority in history). Like Canada, a certain
proportion of especially Eastern USA universities but also Stanford and
U. Texas Austin and a little bit CalTech have "kept the Faith" with the
U.K. standards in physics and mathematics. The Princeton Institute is
arguably the best Institute in the world today and is not Conformist or
Bureaucratic.

It looks as though we need a synthesis or combination of approaches,
and the end to blocking out alternative theories and to Madison Avenue
propaganda whether in or out of the USA, and most of all comparison,
comparison, comparison of different viewpoints and schools and the
restoration of knowledge above materialism. It is something like a
Restoration of chivalry rather than either a revolution or a defusing.
The only academic department of any consequence needs to be knowledge
and ethics; and if ethics is too hard, let's at least try knowledge.

Osher Doctorow

OsherD wrote:
admittedly the [sic] lack of mathematical probability training
of Einstein,

In case you forgot, Einstein was a guru in Statistical Physics and that
(if anything) was his primary strength. He DID, after all, publish the
paper on Brownian Motion which initiated the whole field while also
proving the existence of molecules.

Einstein was the master of the thought experiment. The reason he
couldn't get a university appointment after grad school was that his
professor would not give him a recommendation due to his poor
mathematics. His friends - particularly Minkowski - did his math for
him.

OsherD Jun 13, 3:29 pm

On the other side of the coin, the USA is one of the very, very few
nations with the brains and courage to have and use an effective
Self-Defense or Military Science and to protect small nations of
historical Victims like Israel (Jews being the oldest oppressed
surviving Ethnic minority in history).

That "small nation of historical victims" now has 200+ nuclear warheads
and the missiles, planes and submarines with which to deliver them.
Poor Israel!