Kind: captions
Language: en
on December 1st 2022 the journal Nature
published a cover story about a
holographic Wormhole it was purportedly
created inside a quantum computer to
provee the intersection of quantum
mechanics and gravity the story kicked
off a frenzy of tweets and news
headlines nobody has seen a warm to
nobody has produced One well we'll take
the world's best quantum computer and
see if we can map that into building the
Wormhole the Wormhole becomes
traversible it opens you really can't go
through
bullsh this video was sponsored by
Shopify the problem was of course that
no Wormhole had been created it feeds of
itself right when when one story starts
then other medor outlets grab hold of it
and so it spreads very very quickly what
actually happened is that super a
quantum computer is built and within
this quantum computer you can do some
calculations calculations that uh can be
done with my iPhone because all the most
powerful quantum computers today at most
do calculations that can easily be done
on my iPhone you basically have
something that represents the
mathematics of a wormhole but the way
the story was sold of course is that in
doing this whatever calculation they did
they had created the Wormhole they say
so in the same sense in which I could
say look my children has built a rocket
that goes to the moon so wow what kind
of child you have um yeah here it is and
I show you a little sketch on a piece of
paper when there is a drawing of a
rocket going to the moon and say look so
what the quantum computer has done is
exactly that there a little sketch what
could be
perhaps black a wormhole in some
hypothetical Theory which is probably
wrong is this interesting yes it is
interesting because the fact that with
quantum computers you can do these
things mean that quantum computers
little bit begin working so people get
excited about that and then they go out
and tell to the world oh we've created a
wormhole in a in a quantum
computer
overemphasizing Wormhole which probably
don't exist the theory being used of
that which probably is wrong and the
utility of quantum computers which is
not yet there so that's an example of
bad communication very bad communication
I was embarrassed I was angry with my
colleagues who did that to me it looks
like the source of this problem is bad
incentives scientists need to secure
funding for their research and
increasingly that depends on attracting
public attention to their work just
become part of the culture of science
that it's expected that you will have
some sort of medeor attention and to get
that attention you have to sell your
science and often it's not the result of
the science that is the story something
else universities seek to promote
themselves to attract students and
bolster their reputations and nowhere in
the scientific method is and you release
a press release but it's just become
part of the norm now press releases
simplify and may overstate the research
and journalists just want to get as many
clicks on their stories as they can the
end result of this incentivized game of
telephone can be oversimplified
sensationalized headlines science that
is just plain wrong now I myself have
been guilty of overhyping a science
story back in 2014 I made a video about
the bicep 2 experiment so this is one of
the hugest discoveries in science of all
time researchers reportedly detected
polarization in the cosmic microwave
background radiation allegedly it was
caused by gravitational fluctuations
just a fraction of a second after the
big bang the result was considered the
first real evidence of the quantum
nature of gravity and a Smoking Gun for
inflation Theory experiment wiers even
surprised Andre Lind one of the founders
of inflation Theory with the news let's
just hope that is not a trick I always
live with this
feeling what if I'm tricked what what if
I I I believe into this just because it
is beautiful unfortunately further
observations showed that it was likely
just dust in our own Galaxy rather than
primordial gravitational waves that
created the polarization in the CMB so I
took down my video and to this day I am
wary about making videos about breaking
science news like any type of breaking
news there is a high probability that
early reports will turn out to be wrong
just a few months ago a paper was
uploaded to the archive pre-print server
claiming to have discovered the first
room temperature ambient pressure
superconductor this again triggered a
flood of media attention a Monumental
breakthrough room temperature super
conductor
lk99 one of the most important
scientific breakthroughs of the 21st
century if the discovery were real it
would have been a big deal the room
temperature superconductor stuff of
course is is such a dream because if it
worked it would revolutionize everything
right transmission of energy that kind
of stuff the world would be different if
it worked but even before attempts to
replicate the material and its
properties failed there were clear signs
that the claim was false in the only
published plot showing resistivity
versus temperature the resistivity did
not drop to zero as you'd expect at the
supposed critical temperature instead it
continued to decrease below this Value
Plus the resistivity scale was given in
units of 10us 2 ohm CM on that scale any
ordinary conductor would appear to have
zero resistivity Copper's resistivity
for example is on the order of 10- 6 ohm
CM a video showed the material
apparently levitating above a permanent
magnet in a supposed demonstration of
the Meisner effect but in that same
video the material also sticks to the
magnet something a superconductor would
not do and finally there is this plot
showing that over the past 100 years
scientists have found new materials with
progressively higher critical
temperatures but as of now all the
highest temperature materials only
superc conduct at very high pressures
for an ambient pressure room temperature
superconductor we would need a jump in
critical temperature of around
125° C that's a lot and this brings up
the point that it is the most unexpected
and surprising results that get the most
attention but it is also these very same
results that are the most likely to be
false in social science it's been shown
that studies that later failed to be
replicated receive on average 153 more
citations than studies that can be
replicated similar Buzz surrounds faulty
research in the physical sciences the
Italians I'm Italian came out announcing
to the world some time ago that neutrino
goes faster than light and then measured
it okay it turned out to be a plug that
was not fitting well and so the entire
machine was not working well when the
truth is discovered it rarely gets as
much attention as the original finding
the Fallout where everybody was going on
oh this doesn't work and this doesn't
look right and there's no way this
material can do what they say it's in
that's of Fizzles in the background it
doesn't get the same medor attention
there is the APT saying a lie can travel
around the world while the truth is
still putting on its shoes but that
saying might need to be updated in the
age of social media when lies now have
an even greater Advantage do you think
it's a bigger problem now than it used
to be I must admit that I think it's
getting worse I think there's a feeling
that you you you've got to change the
world to be noticed by the media
overhyping science discoveries can give
people a false sense of how science
works like if that latest Discovery I
hear about turns out to be false what
else could be untrue people keep telling
me that cosmology is in crisis and all
this kind of stuff because that's the
kind of stories they hear in the media
eventually people say well why are we
funding these things if if if it's
always just turmoil making bold
unsubstantiated claims also reduces
trust in scientists so I'm we're
enlarging a little bit the the
conversation here it's not just single
pieces of news I think their entire
fields which are hyped entire wait like
entire fields of of science that are
hyped yes but aren't really legit or
like just they're all hot air or what
what's oh no no they're not hot air
Fusion Fusion's like big in the news
people think it's close right there's
startups there's people getting billions
of dollars exactly I don't know where we
are there again it's not my field but
there was one particular announcement uh
what is one year ago I remember this
announcement yeah scientists have
produced a nuclear fusion reaction that
created more energy than was expended a
breakthrough to tap into the same kind
of energy that powers the sun and the
Stars simply put this is one of the most
impressive scientific Feats of the 21st
century
right
which is bull again uh because it is in
the context of military research of
nuclear
energy uh basically for weapons in a in
a way of doing it which at present has
no uh visible way of how to become
Industrial Way of producing energy yeah
there's no there's no way to scale
there's no way to scale it up this is
just lasers at a pellet just you know
little thing and then you compress it
enormously and then basically it's
explodes because there a mini mini
nuclear explosion and then you have more
energy
than the actual pressure energy that was
needed to compress it that's correct but
you need huge amount of external energy
for doing that that was sold as a big
step toward the solving the energetic
problem of the world but but it's not
back in ' 87 I you know Fusion was was
already people were talking about it
like it's it's around the corner we just
need 20 years more work and we will
we'll crack it and we have have exactly
the same story today with with the
current
experiments something that is not
overhyped is this video sponsor Shopify
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veritasium and now back to science hype
science is interesting in that you can
divide it up into basically two
categories one is an established body of
knowledge and the other is speculations
things that might be true but we don't
really have any solid evidence for them
yet yet and because there can be an
Infinity of bad ideas and only one truth
most of these speculations are likely
wrong but the way certain topics are
discussed in the media it may be
impossible to tell if they're part of
the established body of knowledge or
just very fanciful speculation there are
too many books out there saying we have
understood that the worldall is made by
strings and string theory not true not
at all we have not understood that the
world describ as String Theory we have a
very interesting tentative Theory which
is String Theory which has had some
success and some failures and and and
and that's interesting if you want to
tell about this research do tell about
this research but don't tell people that
this
has it's what we have learned about the
world one question I have is like how do
we how do we get past the overhyping of
science because it seems like the system
is set up to reward overhyping it
rewards the journalist cuz they get the
clicks it rewards the scientists they
may get the money or the attention so I
don't know I'm kind of curious whether
like a solution is possible yeah I think
there is
one and it's exactly what you're
doing um by talking about the fact that
there is a risk of overhyping if I can
go out and say oh my quantum computer
produces a a wormhole and nobody says
anything
that's a problem if we talk about the
risk of hyping if we talk about the risk
of presenting um ideas theories radical
results which are very very tentative as
uh solid then we sort of immunize
ourself against this uh this danger
science is not presented on the news
like sport is presented on the news
right at the end of the news you get 10
minutes of sports where they will talk
about the fact that somebody kicked a
ball around in a field and it's got that
particular important so you get the full
rundown of like lots of bits and pieces
of what's going on but in the to get a
science story it has to be Earth
shattering kind of thing and this would
be a big story what many scientists
would like is is this larger picture of
the fact that the the entire Enterprise
is moving forward right that that there
are lots of things happening and we
definitely know more tomorrow than we do
today but that's not the way that it
gets picked up by the media well
ultimately almost everyone is
incentivized to sensationalize
Scientific findings so I think it's
important to remember that anytime you
hear a science story on the news
surprising unexpected results that have
not been independently replicated they
are more likely than not to be wrong but
despite this I remain convinced that
science is the best way to get at the
truth I mean sure in the short term some
may seek the Spotlight by rushing the
data analysis overstating results or
circumventing per R you but in the long
term that is not going to win you the
Nobel Prize the Bold claims mistakes and
dead ends they will fade into Oblivion
and only sound science that is
vigorously tested and independently
validated that is what makes it into the
accepted body of
knowledge