The Attack of the Science Populists : In Defense of Fundamental Physics

Influencers are attracting huge audiences by peddling misleading narratives about the supposed failures of fundamental physics. Dan Hooper dissects the claims of these science populists. Unlike pseudoscientists promoting obvious nonsense, populists often have research training and speak knowledgeably, making their arguments especially insidious.

A bracing rebuttal of the science populists who’ve built huge audiences on the basis of misleading critiques of fundamental physics, set against a sweeping tour of the deepest unanswered questions facing researchers today. A growing number of critics insist that fundamental physics is in crisis. On their view, our leading theories have produced only stagnation: Blinded by bias and intellectual error, diverted by misaligned incentives, physicists cling to outdated orthodoxies and unverifiable hypotheses. These salvos are not in the pages of scientific journals. Rather, detractors churn out popular books and find a huge reception on social media, podcasts, and YouTube. The Attack of the Science Populists shows that this influencer-driven crisis narrative is mistaken and deliberately misleading. Theoretical physicist Dan Hooper scrutinizes the underlying claims and the polemical voices behind them, situating their story within the broader trend toward science populism. Subtler than purveyors of pseudoscience, science populists—including some climate-change deniers and anti-vaccine activists—appeal to the chimera of “common sense.” Their arguments are rarely obvious nonsense, which makes them all the more insidious. Hooper invites readers to take seriously the puzzles of fundamental physics, including dark matter, dark energy, cosmic inflation, and quantum gravity. He explains why, contrary to the populists’ claims, multiple lines of evidence support the existence of dark matter, and why theories such as string theory are more than mere mathematical speculation, representing some of the most promising research avenues in theoretical physics. He also makes the case that the Large Hadron Collider has been a magnificent success and that it should ultimately be succeeded by even larger particle accelerators. Both an incisive rebuttal and an approachable introduction to the mysteries facing researchers today, The Attack of the Science Populists celebrates the achievements of scientific inquiry, without shying away from the inevitable perplexities.