This morning, the New York Times’ Sunday Review
offers a delightfully droll essay by an astrophysicist, professor Ray
Jayawardhana, plugging his book -- er, plugging the neutrino, about which (by merest coincidence) he happens recently
to have published a slender volume.
He, as do we (here, and here, and here), makes merry at the expense of
all the hoopla that has long (too long) surrounded the Higgs particle, decrying
“the dark art of self-promotion from this boson”, whose indelible “God particle”
mark-of-Cain (out, out damned spot!) “cheapens a solemn scientific enterprise.” He also usefully reports the
dénoument of the Mystery of the Supraluminal Particle: “In the end, the whole affair turned
out to be much ado about a faulty cable.”
Worth a read; here you go:
However, we must sadly point out that his book, accurately
and excitingly titled Neutrino Hunters (echoing the classic Microbe
Hunters of many years ago), comes with a subtitle
The Thrilling Chase for a Ghostly
Particle to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe
which, in so far forth, places it squarely in the camp of
the physics-pornographers.
That tawdry flourish is undoubtedly not his own, and no doubt he
deplores it; it is the latest from
the dens of the Headline Writers,
a scurvy crew.
Such is the fate that awaits any author who hands over his
manuscript to a traditional publisher.
Only when one is writing for the blog over which one retains complete
editorial control, can one avoid such smudges. Never would we
stoop to festooning our essays with phrases like “Physics Porn” or “Bristol
Topless” or “the XXX-axis” or the like, in the hope of attracting readers.
Oh wait …
[Update 14 Feb 2014] A clear-headed and entertaining article by one of my favorite columnists:
The Shroud of Turin, pseudoscience, and journalism
By Joel Achenbach
February 14 at 10:28 am
When I signed on to my AOL email
(retro cool!) on Thursday, a headline flashed on the screen saying something
about the Shroud of Turin. Instinct said: Look away! Nothing good can come of
reading a Shroud of Turin article. Fact-free zone! But I was weak, and I
looked, and soon discovered that I had plunged down the rabbit hole of
pseudoscience and bunk.
It was a Huffington Post article.
The headline said: “Shroud of Turin Formed by an Earthquake? Scientists Say
Face of Jesus Image Caused By Neutron Emissions.”
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