Sometimes this has been a meeting in person, sometimes I've heard from someone by email, and sometimes via a comment on the blog. Woit: The most rewarding experiences I've had because of the blog have been occasions on which it has put me in contact with people I greatly respect who have found the blog useful or interesting. Horgan: What’s the biggest pleasure you get from blogging? Woit and I recently had the following email exchange. The next time the media tout an alleged breakthrough in physics or mathematics, check out Not Even Wrong to get the real scoop.

He can be blunt, but he is always fair, and he does not indulge in cheap shots, snark or grandstanding. Woit, whom I’ve known for more than a dozen years, is a good guy. But he provides plenty of clear, non-technical explanations for non-experts like me. Woit, who has degrees in physics from Harvard and Princeton and has taught mathematics at Columbia since 1989, tracks mathematics as well as physics on his blog, and some of his riffs (like a recent one on the difference between Lie groups and Lie algebras ) are strictly for experts. ” That phrase (credited to Wolfgang Pauli) is the title of Woit’s widely discussed 2006 book (see my review here ) and of his popular blog, which he launched in 2004. He is renowned for asserting that string theory, which for decades has been the leading candidate for a unified theory of physics, is so flawed that it is “ not even wrong.

To keep physics honest, we need watchdogs like Peter Woit. At its best, physics is the most potent and precise of all scientific fields, and yet it surpasses even psychology in its capacity for bullshit.

Not even wrong