Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
8 - What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
from Part One - Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One Reference Frame Columns, Physics Today 1988–2009
- 1 What's wrong with this Lagrangean, April 1988
- 2 What's wrong with this library, August 1988
- 3 What's wrong with these prizes, January 1989
- 4 What's wrong with this pillow, April 1989
- 5 What's wrong with this prose, May 1989
- 6 What's wrong with these equations, October 1989
- 7 What's wrong with these elements of reality, June 1990
- 8 What's wrong with these reviews, August 1990
- 9 What's wrong with those epochs, November 1990
- 10 Publishing in Computopia, May 1991
- 11 What's wrong with those grants, June 1991
- 12 What's wrong in Computopia, April 1992
- 13 What's wrong with those talks, November 1992
- 14 Two lectures on the wave–particle duality, January 1993
- 15 A quarrel we can settle, December 1993
- 16 What's wrong with this temptation, June 1994
- 17 What's wrong with this sustaining myth, March 1996
- 18 The golemization of relativity, April 1996
- 19 Diary of a Nobel guest, March 1997
- 20 What's wrong with this reading, October 1997
- 21 How not to create tigers, August 1999
- 22 What's wrong with this elegance, March 2000
- 23 The contemplation of quantum computation, July 2000
- 24 What's wrong with these questions, February 2001
- 25 What's wrong with this quantum world, February 2004
- 26 Could Feynman have said this? May 2004
- 27 My life with Einstein, December 2005
- 28 What has quantum mechanics to do with factoring? April 2007
- 29 Some curious facts about quantum factoring, October 2007
- 30 What's bad about this habit, May 2009
- Part Two Shedding Bad Habits
- Part Three More from Professor Mozart
- Part Four More to be Said
- Part Five Some People I've Known
- Part Six Summing it Up
- Index
Summary
Se vuol ballare, signor Contino, il chitarino, le suoneró.
– FigaroThe story you are about to read is true. The names, to be sure, have been changed, but not to protect the innocent. Professor Mozart would have been only too pleased for me to use his real name, but we agreed that you, dear reader, might think you were reading a piece of special pleading on behalf of a particular person. Far from it. The point of my tale is not that one physicist has been badly dealt with by the National Science Foundation; indeed Mozart has been very well treated over the years and considers himself lucky to have escaped this time with the wherewithal to keep supporting a solitary graduate student. No, the point of this tale is to illustrate more vividly than reams of surveys or statistics could possibly convey what has happened to NSF support for research in condensed-matter theory.
Condensed-matter theorists have been maintaining for some time, in these pages and even on the op-ed page of The New York Times, that their discipline is being starved by NSF. In reply, NSF has insisted that things are hard all over, and scientists from all over have tended to agree. So I offer the tale of Professor Mozart as a benchmark against which to test the plight of your own field. Have things like this been happening to people in your corner of science?
My tale begins several months ago, when NSF phoned Professor Mozart to tell him that a small condensed-matter theory grant he shared with Professor Beethoven would be renewed, but with a 20% cut—Mozart was to lose 30% and Beethoven 10%.
Mozart was told that four of the five reviewers had given the proposal E's (the highest possible rating) and one a G (two notches down from the top or two notches up from the bottom, depending on the case you're trying to make). Mozart was informed that he, not Beethoven, was responsible for this blemish, and was urged to get his act together if he expected to get any support at all in the next round.
Mozart, who knows perfectly well how things stand in condensed-matter theory and had been expecting far worse, was actually relieved by this turn of events.
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- Why Quark Rhymes with PorkAnd Other Scientific Diversions, pp. 50 - 56Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016