Jim Baggott

In a recent science blog post at Prospect magazine, science writer Philip Ball reviews a recent paper on the nature of the relationship between the size of the cosmological constant and the possibility of star and galaxy formation. As always, Ball’s reporting is entirely accurate, but this paper isn’t about the multiverse, in the sense of promoting or testing ‘multiverse theory’. By taking the catchy word ‘multiverse’ out of context and putting it in the title of the post, the absurd notion of the multiverse as a valid scientific theory, with the capacity to perform calculations (and, by assumption, make predictions), becomes normalised. Multiverse theory can do neither of these things: it simply does not have the same status as quantum theory or big bang cosmology.

It’s hard enough to resist the tide of metaphysical nonsense advertised as science when this is coming from the scientists themselves. Is it too much to ask that science writers and publishers resist the temptation to leap on this bandwagon at every opportunity?

Read my alternative view here