Comments on the Suppression of Peter Rowlands' Paper
This is just to note that there is a side to this which has perhaps been swept under the rug. Initially, arxiv/xxx.lanl was just for hep and then gradually accumulated extra sections. In a sense, then, the organisers see it as dealing with a specific set of specialities, each with narrowly defined subject range that is 'appropriate' for that section. And for practical purposes the range may tend to be identified with 'the interests of the moderator', with general physics being a bin to put things in that don't otherwise fit. That model could explain why approaches outside of string theory have a bad time. Cond-mat and hep-th seem to be different in this regard. Condensed matter physics is so diverse that it would be impossible to restrict it to a particular set of subjects (such as superconductors or polymers), and still claim to represent condensed matter physics as a whole. Contact with the phenomena themselves has forced condensed matter theorists to realise that they have to be inventive, and not rely on fixed ideas. High-energy physics is not constrained by the phenomena to be explained in the same way, and has grown to be more conservative. It seems that many high-energy theorists,
particularly perhaps the arXiv moderators, see it as 'their job'
to explore the consequences of string theory, and consider that
everyone else's job should be this also. Prof. Brian Josephson ArXiv.org's bias toward string theory can be seen from the specialties of their advisory board members. Four members have strong interests in string theory. arXiv Advisory Board S. Berry (Physics/Chemistry) * Has a strong interest in algebraic geometric applications of string theory. |