2/13/2023 0 Comments String theory not even wrong![]() "I use 'not even wrong' to refer to things that are so speculative that there would be no way ever to know whether they're right or wrong," says Peter Woit, a mathematician at Columbia University who runs the weblog Not Even Wrong ( This is the principle of falsifiability, famously associated with the philosopher Karl Popper. There's a reason for this: Pauli's insult slices to the heart of what distinguishes good science from bad. "Not even wrong" is enjoying a resurgence as the put-down of choice for questionable science: it's been used to condemn everything from string theory, via homeopathy, to intelligent design. ![]() "This isn't right," Pauli is supposed to have said of a student's physics paper. But the theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958) is in a category of his own: the withering comment for which he's best known combines utter contempt on the one hand with philosophical profundity on the other. I t is comforting that the finest minds in science are as prone as the rest of us to bitching. ![]()
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