{"id":156063,"date":"2025-09-20T01:11:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T01:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156063\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T01:11:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T01:11:11","slug":"physicist-sabine-hossenfelder-gets-canceled-by-the-munich-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156063\/","title":{"rendered":"Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder Gets Canceled by the Munich Center"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier today, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder<\/a> relayed the news in one of her popular physics podcasts<\/a> at YouTube:<\/p>\n

My former academic institution discontinued my affiliation with them after members of the community complained about my criticism, on their research, and on academic conduct in general, and I refused to agree to tone policing. Free speech in Germany has a big problem indeed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe this really happened.\u201d<\/a> Sabine Hossenfelder, September 17, 2025<\/p>\n

In the first couple of minutes, transcribed, she does not mince words:<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe this really happened.\u201d<\/a> Sabine Hossenfelder, September 17, 2025<\/p>\n

[0:00] Welcome to another episode of Sabine\u2019s getting herself into trouble. I was recently contacted by a physicist who was very upset that I judge their research to be 100% [ __ ].<\/p>\n

He demanded that I remove my video and when I politely declined, complained about me to some people he must have thought were my supervisors in a very deliberate attempt to exert pressure on me.<\/p>\n

I am no longer affiliated with the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. Germany, the land of the free thinkers. <\/p>\n

If science was a circus, they\u2019d all be clowns by now.<\/p>\n

Serves her right, you might say. Shouldn\u2019t have used the B- word. Fair enough. I know some people get offended by my language, though. I think that when it comes to swear words, I\u2019m very moderate. Come on. What the [ __ ] Is this the 16th century or what? I express myself this way because well, for one thing, it\u2019s what I think.<\/p>\n

But more importantly, I don\u2019t want to leave you guessing what I mean. But I can say this entirely without swear words:. A lot of research [in] the foundations of physics is now pseudocience. It hasn\u2019t followed the scientific method for decades.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not bothered by this person\u2019s behavior or by losing my affiliation again because thanks to you, I\u2019m now fully financially independent, which is why I can, in contrast to many others, afford to publicly criticize academic research. But what does bother me is that some physicists still don\u2019t understand the problem with what they call science.<\/p>\n

Of course, I\u2019m not the only one who has noticed this problem. I call it mathematical stories or mathematical fiction or just [ __ ] Others have called it mathematical gymnastics or fairy tale physics. It\u2019s why David Lindley declared the end of physics. And one of the reasons why John Horgan declared the end of science. I\u2019m not making any particularly novel observation here.<\/p>\n

But it keeps going on. This is what blows my mind. It doesn\u2019t matter how obviously this is pseudocience. It doesn\u2019t matter how many people call out this problem, how many books are written about it. It doesn\u2019t matter what I say in any of my videos. It keeps going.<\/p>\n

They keep on producing more of these garbage papers each day and they continue to get published and they continue to get paid for it and then they put out press releases and the media picks it up and people ask me what I think and I say it\u2019s [ __ ] because that\u2019s what it is.<\/p>\n

The problem is widely known among people in the field who tend to acknowledge it privately but would never admit to it in public because their money and their reputation depends on it. Well, most of them wouldn\u2019t admit it\u2026<\/p>\n

She goes on to talk about the problem of pseudoscience in the vast paper mill.<\/p>\n

No doubt there will be more fallout (this episode seems headed for at least half a million views). But the timing is interesting.<\/p>\n

Curious timing<\/p>\n

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a story implying that<\/a> Hossenfelder was a physics conspiracy theorist:<\/p>\n

This resentment of scientific authority figures is the major attraction of what might be called \u201cconspiracy physics.\u201d Most fringe theories are too arcane for listeners to understand, but anyone can grasp the idea that academic physics is just one more corrupt and self-serving establishment. The German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder has attracted 1.72 million YouTube subscribers in part by attacking her colleagues: \u201cYour problem is that you\u2019re lying to the people who pay you,\u201d she declared. \u201cYour problem is that you\u2019re cowards without a shred of scientific integrity.\u201d \u2026<\/p>\n

Such renegades get a friendly reception from Joe Rogan, who regularly has Weinstein on his top-ranked podcast. Rogan\u2019s blend of genuine interest in physics with just-asking-questions goofiness and suspicion of intellectual authority has created a template followed by other popular podcasters. <\/p>\n

Daniel Kagan Kans, \u201cThe Rise of \u2018Conspiracy Physics\u2019<\/a> Streamers are building huge audiences by attacking academic physics as just another corrupt establishment. Scientists are starting to worry about the consequences,\u201d September 11, 2025<\/p>\n

The story followed, as we reported then,<\/a> on a nasty exchange between Johns Hopkins University cosmologist Sean Carroll and mathematical physicist Eric Weinstein on Piers Morgan\u2019s show. On her own channel, Hossenfelder jumped in to defend<\/a> Weinstein from the Establishment figure Carroll. She did not back Weinstein\u2019s theory particularly but she was concerned about the poor quality of the cosmology literature overall.<\/p>\n

\"ExploringImage Credit: Sascha – Adobe Stock<\/p>\n

Indeed, what was remarkable about the Wall Street Journal piece was the willingness of everyone to admit that the decades-long hottie \u2014 string theory<\/a> \u2014 has been a disappointment (without quite saying it, of course). And that\u2019s not even news any more.<\/p>\n

No doubt there will be fallout over the next few weeks that will shed more light. For now, it seems unlikely that the only reason \u2014 in a world awash in profanity and detraction \u2014 that the Munich Center parted ways with Hossenfelder is bad language in her posts. Or, for that matter, that she holds a so-far-unnamed colleague\u2019s theory in deficient esteem. Time will tell but it sounds more like the work of Team Cancel.<\/p>\n

This will do nothing to allay suspicion that she is right about the flood of \u201cgarbage papers.\u201d<\/p>\n

You may also wish to read: At Wall Street Journal: A disappointing fret about \u201cconspiracy physics.\u201d<\/a> If physicists are starting to \u201cworry about the consequences\u201d of discussing long-term theory failure, it is reasonable to think that there are even more serious problems within the discipline. If the physics establishment is only just now beginning to see that public funding depends on public legitimacy, well\u2026 it\u2019s about time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier today, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder relayed the news in one of her popular physics podcasts at YouTube:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[49,48,314,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-156063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-physics","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}