The desire for attractive-looking results affects even the ‘hardest’ sciences. In her book Lost in Math, the physicist Sabine Hossenfelder argues that physicists have gotten high on their own supply, focusing on the elegance and beauty of models such as string theory at the expense of being able to test, in practice, whether they’re actually true.77 Although the lofty, mathematical work of these string theorists feels like it could hardly be further from the (almost literally) kitchen-sink science of Brian Wansink, both kinds of research can become saturated with the same kinds of
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