“Innovation is slowing, research productivity is declining, scientific work is becoming more disruptive. In this video I summarize what we know about the problem and what possible causes have been proposed. I also explain why this matters so much to me.” – Sabine Hossenfelder
I’m removing this because Sabine has repeatedly been lambasted by the media for junk science, and because she’s a known transphobe.
Sabine is the poster child for science populism. She got chewed out by academia for having mediocre research ideas and now she loves to claim that there’s a conspiracy to take funding from her favorite fringe fields and give it to the establishment. But when confronted she falls back on deflections about sexism in science. Now she’s rage-bait content creator because no one wants to deal with her nonsense, science or otherwise.
Two things can be true; academia has a sexism problem, and the scientific community is tired of her particular brand of fringe bullshit (MOND and LQG). We can talk again when that fringe stuff can deal with observations of the cosmic microwave background.
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And she has been doing a lot more of this click baity “science bad” shit because they get 10x the views of her actual science content.
Isn’t this a classic correlation/causation bias? There are more storks, why not more babies? Maybe big discoveries are less likely, but detailed knowledge is improving all the time.
Exactly. It honestly feels like she thinks paradigm shift is the only indicator of progress in science.
Any thoughts from less bigoted creators would be welcome. Not in the mood to watch anything with this person.
what exactly is your problem with “this person”, aka phd holder in her respective field?
Sabine Karin Doris Hossenfelder (born 18 September 1976) is a German theoretical physicist, philosopher of science, author, science communicator, and YouTuber. She is the author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, which explores the concept of elegance in fundamental physics and cosmology, and of Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions.
If I remember right she did a video about trans healthcare and kept referring to a shitty study that was either disproved or had some other issue that made it mostly dismissed by mainstream psychology. She is a physicist not a psychologist and she’s even criticized people for speaking outside their field at one point, then she made a video blowing the risks of transition for trans people way out of proportion. She also just didn’t use or didn’t know about multiple studies showing transition is an effective and accepted treatment for gender dysphoria, basically disagreeing with the general consensus on the effectiveness of transition. I don’t recall all the details but it was at that point I just stopped paying attention to her stuff. I think she’s also been criticized for kinda shitting on niche studies as “for funsies” projects because the existing science disagrees with the hypothesis, which is no reason to not try something. Like string theory and stuff like that.
thank you. might be worth updating the wiki article, if you feel competent to do it.
I’ll say this for her stuff: for a person so willing to argue that mainstream positions on her field are wrong or disregarding data out of conservatism she sure tends to latch on information she agrees with in areas where she’s not an expert and disregard other information.
I’d argue in this specific one her dismissal of “we could argue about how these guys are measuring innovation, but all the papers seem to find the same thing” seems like exactly that, but hey.
She’s ableist and transphobic:
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org
well, that’s unfortunate. if you are familiar with the topic, i encourage you to add that to the wiki page.
Which topic are you referring to? Also which wiki page?
the topic of her transphobia and her wiki page, which is where i went for info about her person.
Ur all about the science untill someone shows u the science lol
Whether that’s the case sometimes, this isn’t the case here.
She doesn’t understand what she is talking about and creating dangerous narratives, she actually doesn’t align with the science, so your argument is factually incorrect. Even if she did, it isn’t as if science has never had a bias or been used to harm before: Hysteria, Draptomania etc etc.
Also, you know nothing about us, so it’s incredible how you can make definitive statements without having any clue about who we are.
Whether that’s the case sometimes, this isn’t the case here.
U gonna back this or just trust me bro?
She doesn’t understand what she is talking about and creating dangerous narratives, she actually doesn’t align with the science, so your argument is factually incorrect.
U gonna back this or just trust me bro?
Even if she did, it isn’t as if science has never had a bias or been used to harm before: Hysteria, Draptomania etc etc.
Are u being a science denier? Sounds like ur crearing a dangerouse narrative here.
Also, you know nothing about us, so it’s incredible how you can make definitive statements without having any clue about who we are.
I know exactly as much as u commented, hence why i was engaging with u on what u commented. Thats how a forum works.
Not all written science is good science. Often the methodology is flawed. It requires very trained eyes to detect potential flaws in a methodology. It’s common that scientists disagree with each other. Science is the process to resolve these disagreements.
I don’t trust Sabine is able to accurately depict the current state of these topics. Her main expertise is physics. I don’t believe she can determine the quality of the papers she mentioned or make a complete survey of the topic.
And that’s why many are disappointed in her. She should know it’s not her field of expertise. She’s not in a position to make these kind of videos.
The second link was exactly what I was thinking of, thanks for finding those!
Sure, we’re happy to help!
I, too, am curious about this whole Hossenfelder imbroglio that I’m first hearing about.
I think the YouTuber Professor Dave just did some videos about her encouraging science denialism. The podcast Decoding the Gurus has also done an episode on her with similar commentary, “good science communicator but also encourages denialism” is the tldr.
She’s a good science communicator in her specialised area from a particular POV (No, Sabine, physics, also theoretical physics, has made progress in the last 50 years) but past that she neither has a clue nor the discipline to work towards having a clue, or the sense to work with people who have a clue.
She lacks that one crucial virtue of a scientist: Considering herself to be clueless. And as a science communicator you need to be a good scientist – not in pedigree of your degree, but approach to knowledge.
