- Jesper Grimstrup has written a book titled The Ant Mill: how theoretical high-energy physics descended into groupthink, tribalism, and mass production of research. There's a lot more about the book at his substack. I've contributed a foreword.
Grimstrup has spent a lot of time thinking about what is going on in the fundamental theoretical physics research community, partly based on his own experiences, together with looking at some data he has gathered and analyzed (with Jarl Sidelmann, see here). Twenty years ago Lee Smolin and I drew attention to these problems, which in many ways have gotten significantly worse since then. I hope Grimstrup's book gets some people thinking seriously about what can be done.
WOIT!
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