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A warped headline - hype in hyperspace

One of the most damaging things science communication can do is exaggerate the implications of a scientific paper, theory or discovery - it happens all the time and I find it infuriating. Sometimes this hype is so bad that it's almost funny. My favourite remains the 2013 'Scientists Finally Invent Real, Working Lightsabers' from the Guardian - I just love that 'finally', as if saying 'scientists what have you been doing all this time?', but the reality was a couple of photons had been made to briefly interact in a Bose Einstein condensate. Mostly, though, these headlines are cringe-making, scientific clickbait of the worst kind.

Some of this comes from publications - I had to stop reading New Scientist because I got so fed up with their exaggerated headlines - some from university press offices, desperate to justify funding, and some from scientists themselves, because they are only human, and some enjoy being in the limelight. But all such hype damages trust in science and science communication, putting science on a par with the output of advertising agencies.

I recently read in a National Geographic headline on Apple News, 'Science fiction's "warp drive" is speeding closer to reality.' There has been plenty of fun speculation in the past about ways to make a warp drive real, though as I pointed out in Interstellar Tours, the approach being touted at the time both required  a huge amount of energy and negative energy (which we don't have access to). Worse still a ship in a warp bubble would have no communication with the outside world, including not seeing where it was going - it would be flying blind, leading to a tendency to fly into solid objects. Hard to imagine it would ever be usable.

I'm not suggesting the Nat Geo piece by Madeleine Stone is bad. It's a fun topic, and she puts in provisos such as 'And while there are still many practical challenges to work out—in particular, how to generate and harness the immense energy needed—some physicists say it’s not outside the realm of possibility.' She describes a new approach to a warp bubble drive that does away with the need for negative energy. Sounds great but note a whole string of provisos. You'd still be flying blind. To keep their model simple, Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire have restricted it to moving at constant speeds - it can't accelerate or decelerate, which immediately makes it unusable. Add to this a requirement for energy equivalent to the mass of 'several Jupiter-sized objects' and the fact it can't even travel faster than light and we discover this is arguably more implausible than the original idea.

So, not a bad article on some fun if totally impractical and never-to-be-used speculation. But what makes me irritated enough to write this piece is that title. 'Speeding closer to reality'? No it isn't. This is simply a lie. I don't blame the science writer here - we don't write our own headlines. But it is irresponsible on the part of the magazine, and yet again it appears science is promising what it can't deliver on.

I'll finish with something I think I've mentioned before (apologies if you remember it) - a quote from my new book The Multiverse which shows how headlines can go over the top on that subject. The invisible dragon referred to is the idea that I can have a theory that there is an invisible dragon in my garage, undetectable by all scientific means. It can't be disproved, but because of that, it's a pointless theory:

  • Aliens from a Parallel Universe May Be All Around Us – And We Don’t Even Know It, Study Suggests (Popular Mechanics) – They are probably playing with my invisible dragon. By definition anything can be happening in a parallel universe we can’t detect, but what does it tell us?
  • Could we travel to parallel universes? (Live Science) – No.
  • Why scientists think the Multiverse isn’t just fiction (Big Think) – Many don’t think this. And the sensible ones who like multiverses only think it might not be fiction. This story was based on eternal inflation.
  • Why do people think NASA has discovered a ‘parallel universe?’ (Newsweek) – They don’t. This was reporting an unfounded claim that an initially puzzling neutrino behaviour could be caused by interaction with a parallel universe where time ran backwards. There were plenty of less bizarre explanations and the claim was never taken seriously.
  • Our reality seems compatible with a quantum multiverse (New Scientist) – It’s also compatible with my invisible dragon. It doesn’t mean that it exists. 
  • We are closer than ever to finally proving the multiverse exists (New Scientist) – No, we aren’t. The strange thing is that (like many such headlines) there is nothing in the article to suggest we are closer than ever to having proof of something that almost certainly can't be proven

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