Hi Dylab. The stereotype is everywhere. I’ve noticed it even among faculty members at universities in non-science disciplines. As an individual, it is pretty easy to dispel once someone gets to know you, but in general I think many people (and lots of kids in particular) hold this caricatured picture of scientists.

One of my co-bloggers (and I can’t remember which one right now) had a post some time ago about kids touring Fermilab and being asked to draw a scientist before the tour and afterwards, and how their ideas changed. It didn’t address quite the point I was making, but a very closely related one.

Here and here. People really do have these stereotypes.

Professor Smolin has written some funny things about Einstein. His description in The Trouble with Physics of how he went to the Institute for Advanced Study to meet Freeman Dyson and find out what Einstein was like, was hilarious. (Dyson himself went there to meet Einstein in the late 40s but never did meet him, because the evening before his meeting he read a lot of Einstein’s recent research papers and decided they were rubbish, and skipped the meeting to avoid an embarrassing confrontation.) In an earlier article on Einstein, Smolin writes:

‘Special relativity was the result of 10 years of intellectual struggle, yet Einstein had convinced himself it was wrong within two years of publishing it. He rejected his theory, even before most physicists had come to accept it, for reasons that only he cared about. For another 10 years, as the world of physics slowly absorbed special relativity, Einstein pursued a lonely path away from it.’

– Einstein’s Legacy – Where are the “Einsteinians?”, by Lee Smolin, http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm

This definitely isn’t what’s required by school physics teachers and string theorists, who both emphasise that special relativity is 100% correct because it’s self-consistent and has masses of experimental evidence. Their argument is that general relativity is built on special relativity, and they ignore Einstein’s own contrary statements like

‘The special theory of relativity … does not extend to non-uniform motion … The laws of physics must be of such a nature that they apply to systems of reference in any kind of motion. … The general laws of nature are to be expressed by equations which hold good for all systems of co-ordinates, that is, are co-variant with respect to any substitutions whatever (generally co-variant).‘ — Albert Einstein, ‘The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity’, Annalen der Physik, v49, 1916 (italics are Einstein’s own).

Einstein does actually admit, therefore, that special relativity is wrong as stated in his earlier paper in Ann. d. Phys., vol. 17 (1905), p. 891, where he falsely claims:

‘Thence [i.e., from the SR theory which takes no account of accelerations or gravitation] we conclude that a balance-clock at the equator must go more slowly, by a very small amount, than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles under otherwise identical conditions.’

This is by consensus held to be the one error of special relativity, see for example http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-9/pdf/vol58no9p12_13.pdf

When clocks were flown around the validate ‘relativity’ they actually validated the absolute coordinate system based general relativity (the gravitational field is the reference frame). G. Builder (1958) is an article called ‘Ether and Relativity’ in the Australian Journal of Physics, v11 (1958), p279, writes:

‘… we conclude that the relative retardation of clocks … does indeed compel us to recognise the causal significance of absolute velocities.’

The famous paper on the atomic clocks being flown around the world to validate ‘relativity’ is J.C. Hafele in Science, vol. 177 (1972) pp 166-8, which cites uses ‘G. Builder (1958)’ for analysis of the atomic clock results. Hence the time-dilation validates the absolute velocities in Builder’s ether paper!

In In 1995, physicist Professor Paul Davies – who won the Templeton Prize for religion (I think it was $1,000,000), wrote on pp. 54-57 of his book About Time:

‘Whenever I read dissenting views of time, I cannot help thinking of Herbert Dingle… who wrote … Relativity for All, published in 1922. He became Professor … at University College London… In his later years, Dingle began seriously to doubt Einstein’s concept … Dingle … wrote papers for journals pointing out Einstein’s errors and had them rejected … In October 1971, J.C. Hafele [used atomic clocks to defend Einstein] … You can’t get much closer to Dingle’s ‘everyday’ language than that.’

Dingle wrote in the Introduction to his book Science at the Crossroads, Martin Brian & O’Keefe, London, 1972, c2:

‘… you have two exactly similar clocks … one is moving … they must work at different rates … But the [SR] theory also requires that you cannot distinguish which clock … moves. The question therefore arises … which clock works the more slowly?’

This question really kills special relativity and makes you accept that general relativity is essential, even for clocks in uniform motion. I don’t think Dingle wrote the question very well. He should have asked clearly how anyone is supposed to determine which clock is moving, in order to calculate the time-dilation.

If there is no absolute motion, you can’t determine which clock runs the more slowly. In chapter 2 of Science at the Crossroads, Dingle discusses Einstein’s error in calculating time-dilation with special relativity in 1905 and comments:

‘Applied to this example, the question is: what entitled Einstein to conclude from his theory that the equatorial, and not the polar, clock worked more slowly?’

Einstein admitted even in popular books that wherever you have a gravitational field, velocities depend upon absolute coordinate systems:

‘But … the general theory of relativity cannot retain this [SR] law. On the contrary, we arrived at the result according to this latter theory, the velocity of light must always depend on the coordinates when a gravitational field is present.’ – Albert Einstein, Relativity, The Special and General Theory, Henry Holt and Co., 1920, p111.

The real brilliance of Einstein is that he corrected his own ideas when they were too speculative (e.g. his ‘biggest blunder’, the large positive CC to cancel out gravity at the mean intergalactic distance, keeping the universe from expanding). What a contrast to string theory.

In the effort to portray scientists (or luminaries in any field) as fallible humans, I think that we need to take into the account the socio-cultural mores of their times. In early 20th c. Europe people were much more accepting of a lot of behaviors and beliefs currently frowned upon at best – racism, patriarchal attitudes, adultery, having relationships with minors, etc. Because of this, and also because of different attitudes regarding the divide between one’s behavior in the personal and public domains, the perception of the human qualities of Einstein et al would have been different when they started gaining wider recognition.

LOL! Great find, Count Iblis!

cool blog

Physicists & Physicians
Every nation highly prices nuclear physicists & nuclear power
but even kings, presidents & senators must bow to the physician
literally put their life in the surgeon’s hands when they go for by-pass surgery or any other ‘surgical’ treatment

And of course physicists can talk about gravity & quantum gravity
but the plastic surgeon who promises to reverse its effects (even if only temporarily), with a sligt of hand, gets the bird, the adulation and the dosh.

However I think in modern times we’ve all seen those working at NASA and the cars they drive, and we know how much the ‘nerds’ at Microsoft or Apple earn. After all Bill Gates has consistently beaten the top earning ‘financiers’ from Wall St despite their pin stripe, Italian suits or shirts & ties.

Plus most ‘industrialisists’ and ‘manufacturing’ millionaires in Germany & Japan had a good idea of what they wanted their products (applied physics) to deliver.

todd, listen to what “real” people talk about: Their jobs and their relationship/sex live. Not terribly interesting for the most part.

To some degree I wonder what this aspiration with appearing normal is. We are far more interesting then that!

More to the point of the thread, just yesterday I was dancing in a mosh pit that to roughly 10% consisted of people doing a PhD in mathematics/theoretical physics. I conclude that Science is Punk. Disproportionally so at least.

Beyond that I wonder whether how stereotypes differ between say England and Germany or France. Or of course to the US. I’m curious: What are peoples experiences with that?
Personally speaking I find that the reactions to “I study theoretical physics” I get in Germany and the UK are quite different (except for the most common: “I never understood physics in school”).

I see your point. It’s not that we are fully normal, it’s that besides the super hero powers that come with the job, we are also normal. Agreed.

Still, science is not a job like every other. Every working scientist has made choices that put acquiring knowledge over acquiring money. There are few other fields where you find people so passionate about what they do.

I would like to think that these are the strongest and most honest selling points. To emphasize that this awesome occupation is being filled by human beings certainly can’t hurt though.

Re. post #15.

Nic,

One doesn’t need to understand French to see that it *is* possible to be an acclaimed Physicist who looks like a “normal” working person. De Gennes is quite the antithesis of the stereotypical poorly groomed Physicist!
In a jacket sans those tell-tale academic elbow patches, one could easily mistake him for a lawyer or businessman.

sure there are stereotypes around, but that’s nothing specific to theoretical physicists, one finds it in many other fields as well. Psychologists analyze you all the time, people in advertisement drive flashy cabriolets, models have eating disorders, car salesmen are liars, politicians are cheaters, doctors of medicine are the gods in white, nurses are their angles, and all artists take drugs. OF COURSE the only thing relevant about my life is sex and science. To bad Einstein died before I was born.

Ok, I just don’t feel like wading through the comments. But it’s worth noting that people have all sorts of outside interests. For example, Paul Kwiat is an avid swing dancer…

As long as we’re bringing up examples of physicists who went off to do other things let’s not forget Brian May, who is to my knowledge the only physicist who has gone platinum. And there was a reason Bill Amend kept putting geek references into Foxtrot…

I wouldn’t worry too much about unflattering stereotypes of physicists reducing the talent pool. Any young person deterred from entering physics for this reason is of exceedingly limited perspicacity and therefore unlikely to be talented in physics, where perceiving the truth of things is the name of the game. Any young person whose repulsion from physics based of such stereotypes exceeds her attraction based on the nature of the subject isn’t much interested in physics.

If you want to create more interest in physics as a career choice among people are aren’t particularly interested in physics, you must connect it to the things that most people are interested in: money, power, and sex. Because of a perceived connection between these things and the legal profession, law schools have a surplus of applicants despite lawyers being generally regarded as lying scum.

Belizean,

Anyone who goes into physics for money or power is not likely to be bright enough for physics. And last time I checked, “I am a physicist” was roughly as effective a pick-up line as “I live with my mother,” though marginally more effective than “I’m on parole on child pornography charges” and clearly less effective than “I’m an escaped axe murderer.”

The situation for women may be slightly different. As a female undergrad at Caltech wrote: “for a woman here, the odds are good but the goods are odd.”

Actually, CIP, I have found that being a physicist always worked pretty well with the laydeez. Back when I was single, mind. Maybe it was my steely gaze, handsome face and witty repartee at work*.

*Not likely, for almost all meanings of ‘not’.

Oppenheimer on Einstein should not be missed.

When I learned more about a missing daughter of Maric and Einstein, and Einstein’s late life affair in Princeton, I lost much sympathy for the man as any kind of human being to emulate. Einstein should be remembered for his scientific works and not for much else.