Theorists, Experimentalists and the Bias in Popular Physics
大众物理学中的理论家、实验家和偏见
Most people with more than a passing interest in physics will tell you who came up with the idea of quarks - Murray Gell-Mann.
大多数对物理学稍有兴趣的人都会告诉你夸克的概念是谁提出来的--默里-盖尔-曼（Murray Gell-Mann）。
Now gather around the same crowd which knows about Gell-Mann and ask them who Henry Kendall, Jerome Friedman and Richard Taylor are. It’s very likely that you will draw mostly blank stares.
现在，把知道盖尔-曼的人聚集在一起，问他们亨利-肯德尔、杰罗姆-弗里德曼和理查德-泰勒是谁。你极有可能会遭遇大多数人的茫然目光。
Yet "coming up with the idea" was as far as Gell-Mann went in 1964 when he and George Zweig independently developed the concept. Without the 1968 experiments of Kendall, Friedman and Taylor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), quarks would have remained a mere theory, a will-o-wisp whose existence was confidently postulated but never proven.
然而，“提出这个想法”只是盖尔-曼在 1964 年和乔治-茨威格（George Zweig）独立提出这个概念时所达到的极限。如果没有 1968 年肯德尔、弗里德曼和泰勒在斯坦福直线加速器中心（SLAC）进行的实验，夸克可能还只是一种理论，一种被自信地假设但从未被证实存在的 “臆想”。
Similar themes proliferate throughout the popular view of physics. Everyone knows Paul Dirac who conjectured the existence of the positron, but how many know Carl Anderson and his collaborator Seth Neddermeyer who actually found it? People similarly know about Wolfgang Pauli and Enrico Fermi stating the requirement for a ghostly particle called the neutrino in the 30s, but ask popular science enthusiasts if they are aware of the dogged pursuit of the neutrino by Raymond Davis for over 30 years and you will likely see knitted brows. Finally, even today, a schoolchild would likely know Einstein’s prediction of the bending of starlight by the gravitational field of a star, but Arthur Eddington’s verification of this fact would be little known.
类似的主题在物理学的流行观点中比比皆是。每个人都知道保罗-狄拉克曾猜想正电子的存在，但又有多少人知道卡尔-安德森和他的合作者塞斯-内德迈尔真正发现了正电子？人们同样知道沃尔夫冈-泡利和恩里科-费米在上世纪 30 年代提出了对一种被称为中微子的幽灵粒子的需求，但如果问科普爱好者是否知道雷蒙德-戴维斯 30 多年来对中微子的执着追求，你很可能会看到他紧蹙的眉头。最后，即使在今天，小学生也可能知道爱因斯坦关于恒星引力场使星光弯曲的预言，但亚瑟-爱丁顿对这一事实的验证却鲜为人知。
I started mulling over this vivid gap between the public’s appreciation of theorists vs experimentalists on reading a post by physics professor Chad Orzel who, taking a cue from my post about famous American physicists, makes the cogent point that while American theorists lagged behind their European counterparts until the post-war years, they were almost equal to the Europeans even in the 1920s. His point is that we often tend to overemphasize the role of theory over experiment.
在读到物理学教授查德-奥泽尔（Chad Orzel）的一篇文章时，我开始思考公众对理论家与实验家之间的这种鲜明差距。他从我关于美国著名物理学家的文章中得到启发，提出了一个有说服力的观点：虽然美国的理论家在战后之前一直落后于欧洲的同行，但即使在 20 世纪 20 年代，他们也几乎与欧洲人不相上下。他的观点是，我们往往倾向于过分强调理论的作用，而不是实验的作用。
Now there’s no doubt that physicists themselves would be the first ones to recognize the value of experimentalists; for instance Anderson, Davis and the Kendall-Friedman-Taylor trio were all recognized by Nobel Prizes. But their recognition in the public mind ranges from vague to non-existent. This gap in perception is especially startling given the singular importance of experiment in physics and all of science, a central paradigm that has been the centerpiece of the scientific method since Galileo (apocryphally) dropped iron balls from the leaning tower of Pisa. Richard Feynman paid a sparkling tribute to the supremacy of experiment when he said:
毫无疑问，物理学家本身是第一个承认实验家价值的人；例如，安德森、戴维斯和肯德尔-弗里德曼-泰勒三人组都曾获得诺贝尔奖。但他们在公众心目中的认可度却从模糊到不存在。鉴于实验在物理学和所有科学中的特殊重要性，这种认知上的差距尤其令人震惊。自伽利略（天方夜谭）从比萨斜塔上抛下铁球以来，实验就一直是科学方法的核心范式。理查德-费曼（Richard Feynman）对实验至高无上的地位给予了高度评价，他说：
"In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong."
“一般来说，我们通过以下过程寻找新定律。首先，我们猜测它。然后，我们计算猜测的结果，看看如果我们猜测的定律是正确的，那么它将意味着什么。然后，我们将计算结果与自然、实验或经验进行比较，直接与观察结果比较，看它是否有效。如果与实验结果不符，那就是错误的。这句简单的话就是科学的关键所在。你的猜测有多漂亮，没有任何区别。你有多聪明、是谁做出的猜测、他叫什么名字都没有任何区别--如果与实验不符，那就是错的。”
An even more pointed and roaring tribute to experiment came from the utterly self-assured king of experimental physics, Ernest Rutherford. His opinion of theoreticians was that "they play games with their symbols, but we turn out the real facts of Nature". And he is said to have admonished the capable students working under his tutelage - nine of whom won Nobel Prizes - to not "let me catch anyone talking about the Universe".
实验物理学之王欧内斯特-卢瑟福（Ernest Rutherford）对实验的赞美更为尖锐和咆哮。他对理论家的看法是：“他们玩的是符号游戏，而我们研究的是大自然的真实情况”。据说他还告诫在他指导下工作的能干的学生--其中九人获得了诺贝尔奖--不要 “让我抓住任何人谈论宇宙”。
Rutherford was the ultimate experimentalist and Feynman was the ultimate theorist but Feynman was well aware of how a well-conceived experiment is really the only thing that can make or break a theory. Ironically, the public devaluing of experimentalists applies to Feynman’s own work. The theory of quantum electrodynamics which he developed is perhaps the most accurate theory in physics. As one example, it can calculate the magnetic moment of the electron correctly to an unprecedented 15 decimal places. But we would never have known this if it weren’t for the experimentalists who devised increasingly ingenious experiments to measure the parameter. Yet everyone has heard of Feynman, but who has heard of Lamb, Kusch or Foley?
卢瑟福是终极实验家，而费曼则是终极理论家，但费曼非常清楚，只有精心构思的实验才能真正决定理论的成败。具有讽刺意味的是，公众对实验家的贬低也适用于费曼自己的工作。他提出的量子电动力学理论也许是物理学中最精确的理论。例如，它可以正确计算电子的磁矩，精确到前所未有的小数点后 15 位。但是，如果不是实验学家们设计出越来越巧妙的实验来测量这个参数，我们永远也不会知道这一点。然而，每个人都听说过费曼，但有谁听说过兰姆、库什或福里呢？
It seems to me that there are at least two important reasons why the public, in spite of tacitly appreciating the all-important role of experiment in physics, fails to give experimentalists their due. First is the sheer success of theoretical physics in uncovering the deepest mysteries of the universe through armchair speculation. Nobody can fail to gasp in awe at an Einstein or Bohr who, working with a few facts and pencil and paper, divine grand operating principles for the cosmos in short order.
在我看来，公众尽管心照不宣地理解实验在物理学中的重要作用，但却没有给予实验者应有的待遇，这至少有两个重要原因。首先是理论物理学在通过“扶手椅”式的推测揭开宇宙最深层奥秘方面取得了巨大成功。没有人会不对爱因斯坦或玻尔惊叹不已，因为他们仅凭一些事实和纸笔，就在短时间内推测出了宇宙的宏伟运行原理。
Compared to their efforts based on pure thought, the corresponding efforts of experimentalists who get down on their knees, liberally coat their hands with grease and spend most of their time soldering electronic circuits and fashioning precision machine parts on a lathe sounds humdrum and boring. Yet this mundane work is an essential step toward the grand finale of hard factual discovery. Even the rare combination of theorist and experimentalist appreciates this; for instance, in spite of his pioneering contributions to theory, Fermi always said that his first love was experiment and he could often be found performing the most mundane of tasks.
与他们基于纯粹思维的努力相比，实验家们跪在地上，双手涂满油脂，大部分时间都在焊接电子线路和在车床上制作精密机械零件，这些相应的努力听起来枯燥乏味。然而，这些平凡的工作却是迈向艰苦的事实发现这一宏伟目标的重要一步。例如，尽管费米在理论方面做出了开创性的贡献，但他总是说，他的第一爱好是实验，而且经常可以发现他在从事最平凡的工作。
To be fair though, it’s hard not to admire theorists when many experimentalists, as ingenious as their contraptions are, "simply" validate things which the theorists have already said. Anderson might have discovered the positron, but Dirac invented it first. Eddington might have observed deflected starlight, but Einstein simply plucked it out of thin air based on what seemed like magical speculation.
不过，公平地说，当许多实验学家，尽管他们的发明巧夺天工，却 “仅仅”验证了理论学家已经说过的话时，我们很难不佩服理论学家。安德森可能发现了正电子，但狄拉克首先发明了它。爱丁顿可能观测到了偏转的星光，但爱因斯坦只是根据看似神奇的推测凭空捏造出来的。
Firstly however, it’s very important to realize that all the awe for Einstein which we rightly feel comes only after the fact, after a thousand increasingly demanding tests of general relativity have established the veracity of the theory beyond any doubt. As Feynman said, no matter how pretty the theory looks and no matter how brilliant its creator sounds, it is no more than a hypothesis until it’s verified. Einstein unverified would have been a mystic. Fortunately the public seems to have gradually woken up to the straitjacket that ugly, grease-and-solder experiment imposes on elegant theory. This is most apparent in the decline of popular versions of string theory; after a period of breathless ascendancy by its proponents, the public seems to increasingly realize the gaping chasm between theory and experiment which the string theoretical framework constantly displays. String theory in fact is the perfect test of the ability of an informed public to distinguish between fact and speculation, and so far the signs seem promising.
不过，首先必须认识到，我们对爱因斯坦的敬畏之情只是在事后才产生的，是在对广义相对论进行了无数次越来越苛刻的测试，毫无疑问地证实了这一理论的真实性之后才产生的。正如费曼所说，无论理论看起来多么漂亮，无论其创造者听起来多么才华横溢，在得到验证之前，它都不过是一种假设。未经验证的爱因斯坦只能是个神秘主义者。幸运的是，公众似乎已经逐渐意识到，丑陋的、涂脂抹粉的实验给优雅的理论套上了紧身衣。这一点在弦理论流行版本的衰落中表现得最为明显；在弦理论支持者气势如虹地崛起了一段时间之后，公众似乎越来越意识到弦理论框架不断显示出的理论与实验之间的鸿沟。事实上，弦理论是对知情公众区分事实与猜测能力的完美考验，而目前的迹象似乎很有希望。
Secondly, there are also outstanding example of discoveries made by experimenters which really had no theoretical precedent. That is what makes Rutherford and Faraday the two greatest experimental physicists in history. Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus in 1908, but it took thirty years for physicists to develop a concrete theory of the nucleus. Similarly Faraday discovered the seamless relationship between electricity and magnetism - one of the very few examples of unification by experiment - but it took until after his death for Maxwell to come up with his pioneering theory of electromagnetism. Experimentalists often follow in the steps of theorists, but the instances in which they lead the way are as full of creativity and achievement as the work of an Einstein, Bohr or Feynman. And even when they follow, they are the ones who bridge the gap between idea and hard fact.
其次，也有一些杰出的实验者的发现确实没有理论先例。这就是卢瑟福和法拉第成为历史上最伟大的两位实验物理学家的原因。卢瑟福在 1908 年发现了原子核，但物理学家花了 30 年时间才提出了原子核的具体理论。同样，法拉第发现了电与磁之间的无缝关系--这是极少数通过实验实现统一的例子之一--但直到他去世后，麦克斯韦才提出了开创性的电磁学理论。实验学家常常追随理论学家的脚步，但他们引领潮流的事例与爱因斯坦、玻尔或费曼的工作一样充满创造力和成就。即使是跟在后面，他们也是在想法和确凿事实之间架起桥梁的人。
The other big reason why for the public seems to downplay the key role of experiments is the bias in physics popularization toward theory. And here at least part of the blame must be laid at the feet of experimentalists themselves. For instance if we ponder over who the leading physics popularizers in the last twenty years are, the names that come to our minds include Brian Greene, Lisa Randall, Leonard Susskind, Brian Cox and Sean Carroll. Almost no experimenter makes the list; Anil Ananthaswamy is one of those rare writers who has shined a light on the heroic efforts of experimenters in validating cutting-edge theories. In a previous post I mentioned how the public has been fed increasingly exotic and speculative physics fare that tends to influence their opinion about what they consider are the most important fields in physics. Cosmology and quantum theory rank high on their list, condensed matter physics and biophysics rank low. But condensed matter theory still ranks higher than condensed matter experiment. Observational cosmology still takes a backseat to speculations about the Big Bang. This has to change.
公众似乎淡化了实验的关键作用，另一个重要原因是物理学的普及偏向于理论。在这方面，至少有一部分责任必须归咎于实验学家本身。例如，如果我们思考一下谁是过去二十年中物理学普及的领军人物，我们脑海中浮现的名字包括布莱恩-格林、丽莎-兰德尔、伦纳德-苏斯金德、布莱恩-考克斯和肖恩-卡罗尔。阿尼尔-阿南塔斯瓦米（Anil Ananthaswamy）是那些罕见的作家之一，他揭示了实验者在验证前沿理论时所付出的英勇努力。在上一篇文章中，我提到了公众是如何被灌输了越来越多奇异和投机的物理知识，从而影响了他们对物理学中最重要领域的看法。宇宙学和量子理论在他们的清单上排名靠前，而凝聚态物理和生物物理学则排名靠后。但凝聚态理论的排名仍然高于凝聚态实验。观测宇宙学仍然排在对宇宙大爆炸的推测之后。这种情况必须改变。
If we want to improve the public visibility of experimentalists and place experimentalists in their rightful place in the pantheon of popular physics, the main initiative would have to come from experimentalists themselves. There is no doubt that experimental physics has seen some amazing advances in the last two decades, so there＇s certainly no dearth of stories to tell. For instance just last year the Nobel Prize in physics went to Serge Haroche and David Weinland who have achieved amazing feats in trapping ions and atoms and verifying some of the most bizarre predictions of quantum mechanics. Yet where are the books which elaborate on these successes? Three years ago the physics Nobel again went to experimenters who used the simplest and most ingenious methods to create graphene. Still there are no vividly written books about these experiments. There are plenty of other motifs, from the observation of supernovae and x-ray astronomy to the manipulation of single DNA molecules using lasers, which can be productively captured in popular physics books. In addition the manipulation of these tools to plumb the depths of nature’s secrets is every bit as exciting to its practitioners as calculating the curvature of spacetime is to its own. It’s up to those who deftly wield this machinery to convey their personal pleasure of finding things out to the public.
如果我们想提高实验物理学家在公众中的知名度，让实验物理学家在大众物理学的神殿中占据应有的位置，那么主要的举措必须来自实验物理学家自己。毫无疑问，在过去二十年里，实验物理学取得了一些令人惊叹的进步，因此当然不乏值得讲述的故事。例如，去年的诺贝尔物理学奖就颁给了塞尔日-哈罗奇和戴维-温兰，他们在捕获离子和原子以及验证量子力学中一些最离奇的预言方面取得了惊人的成就。然而，阐述这些成就的书籍在哪里？三年前，诺贝尔物理学奖再次颁给了用最简单、最巧妙的方法制造出石墨烯的实验者。但仍然没有关于这些实验的生动书籍。从观测超新星和 X 射线天文学到利用激光操纵单个 DNA 分子，还有许多其他主题，都可以在普及物理书籍中得到有效的介绍。此外，对于物理实践者来说，利用这些工具探索大自然深处的秘密，就像计算时空曲率一样令人兴奋。这就需要那些巧妙地运用这些工具的人向公众传递他们发现事物的个人乐趣。
Experiment is the ultimate arbiter of science and it’s a pity that the current popular physics literature does not reflect this all-important fact. Experimenters and their journalist friends need to now pick up the baton and run with it. They need to communicate to the public why ion traps are as engrossing as Lie groups, why even the most elegant mathematical edifice can crumble in the face of confounding experimental evidence, why, in Rutherford’s words, "the theorists play games with their symbols while they are the ones who turn out the real facts of nature".
实验是科学的最终仲裁者，遗憾的是，目前的物理学普及读物并没有反映出这一至关重要的事实。实验者和他们的记者朋友们现在需要接过接力棒，带着它奔跑。他们需要向公众宣传，为什么离子阱会像李群一样引人入胜，为什么即使是最优雅的数学大厦也会在令人困惑的实验证据面前轰然倒塌，为什么用卢瑟福的话来说，“理论家们在玩弄他们的符号，而他们却是揭示自然界真正事实的人”。
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