▲ 9 points
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4 comments
Previously on HN (4 days ago, 250pt, 180 comments):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18493019
Looks like the author republished on Nautilus.
I must have missed that. It's still an interesting read.
This article has a huge number of problems. To say "not a single one" of theory prediction was right overlooks the Higgs. To call all the theorists work "predictions" and calling them "wrong" is employing phrases which undermines the scientific method of hypothesis testing and devalues the work of people trying to understand the foundations of physics. To do those tests and get null results is valuable. We could not make progress with those questions still open.
The Higgs boson was predicted in 1967 whereas the article talks about physics in the last 40 years, which excludes that prediction. 40 years is not a particularly cherry-picked number. If HEP hadn't produced a confirmed prediction in 30 years that still would be worth calling stagnation.
Your understanding of the scientific method is flawed. I can come up with thousands of HEP predictions that would be easily falsified, causing a proliferation of null results and all of them absolutely worthless.
A null result is useful when it points you in a better direction.