WEI, Jian’s blog

Recently, attended a lecture by Nobel laureate Steve Weinberg. When asked about what if the new high energy collider doesn’t give any new result, he says something like “then there is nothing else to do” which sounds like the end of high energy physics or the ultimate physics. He joked that he doesn’t like condensed matter physics because that is too human (not pure physics). It seems that he still is unhappy with PWA about the fact that Phil made some statements against spending money on big collider project (the SC).

When asked about the inter-fertilization between different disciplines even within physics, he says at most people can learn some techniques from different fields, but not the ideas. And he believes that it is natural that people within each sub-field of physics can’t understand each other since nowadays most people are specialized in a very small area.

For the first opinion, personally, I agree with PWA (and probably Feynman) about “more is different/there is plenty of room at the bottom”, there are interesting things/new paradigms at levels higher than particle physics. For particle physicists, it is probably close to the ultimate high-energy experiment that can be done on earth, the next available thing is cosmology. But for condensed mater physics, there are still lots of things worth to research on although not as fundamental as particle physics.

For the second one, although I really hope there be more places/institutes that can allow many people from different fields to exchange their ideas and create new physics, but in reality, I think most people are just too busy with his own research in a small field and won’t have time to look outside his/her field. If even top theorists don’t think they can learn things from each other, then it is more difficult for experimentalists since there are money and manpower issues. For example, in bio-physics, many people doing physics are interested in this but just do not want to risk too much since it is hard to find a niche that suits their expertise.

Government is always the biggest investor of interdisciplinary research. But now for U.S., probably because it is becoming an “old” society, or because there is no pressure from the outside (like soviet union), there is a tendency to cut funding for fundamental research. Like in an old Chinese saying: when all hares were killed, there is no use of arc and arrow. As the only superpower in the world, its people might just want to shut its door to outside, like what ancient China has done. It seems true that when the society becomes old, it won’t value those who wanted to explore new things; instead, it values order and good services. I remember that one high level officer from China said, right now only in China, Taiwan and Korea, the government is still increasing funding for fundamental research. If this trend keeps, maybe there is more chance for future physics in these countries.  

Right now there seems to be more and more successful people coming back from U.S. to china, e.g. the former MS VP Kai-Fu Lee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai-Fu_Lee) moved back in 1998; and recently, many well-known professors from U.S. moved back to top Universities in China, Chi-Chih Yao  (http://www.answers.com/Chi-Chih%20Yao), Yi Rao  (http://www.nibs.ac.cn/english/index.php?act=view&id=16).

Not only do they bring their experiences and perspectives from U.S., what is more important is that they provide role models for young people. In my college years, mid-nineties, most friends and myself did not have a role model to follow. Even in the highly respectful Universities, there weren’t many professors that can be the role model and provide useful guidance for the new generation. Of cause there were historic reasons, but that probably indeed caused a narrow-minded generation. The role models set up by the government, mostly were too pale to be true, or just kind of fake. People want not only sacrifice and spiritual satisfaction, like in a religion, they also want a colorful life, and to be themselves. The government just can’t, and probably not supposed to provide all role models.

So at that time, it seems what is real is just power and money, which brings high social status. There is not much space for culturing one’s own interests like pursuing basic science, democracy, public service, helping the poor, and protect environment etc. Those responsibilities belong to the government, people think, not themselves. But when nobody really thinks about those things, the government, which is run by the same kind of people, can’t be serious about those issues. So even if the few elite people on the top of the power pyramid have the will to change the situation, there are not enough officers qualified to do this. We can image that in the near future, people will still complain that the government is bureaucratic and is not really functional well.

Today, the situation is better, besides some of those successful people in China; we also have successful people coming back from aboard with their experiences and more importantly, different perspectives, many of them determined to make a difference in China. They can really make good role models for young generations. Those people are usually confident, are leaders in their field, some of them even publish their autobiographies and use the Internet to promote their thoughts and opinions (see e.g. the blogs by Y-C Ho http://www.sciencenet.cn/blog/user_content.aspx?id=7579 and H-F Wang http://www.sciencenet.cn/blog/user_content.aspx?id=477 ). By opening themselves to the young generation, they may help to shape the thinking of the younger, and may even help to shape the future of the country.

The government, or more precisely the department of education, should use its means to help the young generation, the majority of them, including those in the countryside, to know and learn from these role models (for example by distributing free books etc). A fact is, although many of the current officials at the department of education are probably themselves foreign degree holders, most of them only learned things in their own special field instead of how to be a leader and policy maker. They should consult people who have more experience abroad when making new policy. So far from what the department has done, like increasing the fee for higher education, asking money for primary education, seems not very constructive. That is a different topic though.

I have observed an interesting phenomenon: few of physics students want to join a traditional lab that mainly does transport measurements.

A probably extreme situation happens in the department I got my PhD in a nice public university. The department directory listed 17 faculty members in condensed matter experiment group, 3 associated faculty members, but only 8 graduate students. And among the listed 8 students, I personally know one already defended and left, two are planning to do that next year, and one is taking time off. Although some faculty members have students from other departments, and some students may be not listed, but still the ratio is less than one student for each faculty members.

The situation seems a little better in the place that I am staying as a postdoc, a private university. The department directory listed 7 members in the condensed matter experiment group, but doesn’t separate graduate students from different sub-fields. In our lab that does low temperature experiment, we only have one 6^th year graduate student who is leaving the next year. Since the labs are close, I know the situation of other three groups out of the 7. Two have two students and one has probably 6 (really an exception). However, here it seems each group occupies much larger lab space and in principle can accommodate more people.

Isn’t it a little waste of the resource? It is true that the competition in the academy is hard, and getting a PhD in physics is probably no longer a good career choice.  But for a group, without incoming students, besides the funding issue, a lot of lab know-how will be lost that makes it more difficult to get new students. Anything can change this? Be more open-minded and encourage students to go to industry?  I do not know the answer.

During years of research at graduate school, I become aware that there are many mistakes in the literature, sometimes even wrong results got published and got more citations than the right ones. However, usually nobody will tell you exactly which are wrong and you just easily got lost in the large amount of literature that keeps piling up.

To save us some precious time so we can enjoy doing something else, e.g. blogging here, we could use a literature system that marks clearly which paper is the classic one and which one is just wrong. In a sense this is like a review system by experts and could look like a tree graph with the classical paper at the beginning of the tree.

The APS online PR series already benefit us a lot with the citing article links. But a database can be more useful if there is some guidance to it, e.g. an extra mark for each paper showing the importance, the originality of the paper etc. The overall efficiency of the scientific community can be much higher this way.

Although this sounds like a sweet dream, but there is indeed something similar in the mathematician’s community, check this http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/. Although this is about people not about papers, similar plot could be also useful for physics students.

I think that democracy requires active participation of qualified citizens.

In U.S., the middle class majority, not the elite minority, dominates the policy making process.

In China, so far we do not have such a well developed middle class, so pursuing the ultimate democracy will only leads to riots and setbacks of the society. This has been proved by the history of ancient China.

However, I do think the government should be responsible to educate and encourage the future middle class, since that will make a better society eventually. Right now, since we are a developing country, we can still kind of benefit from the experiences of those developed countries, but eventually China needs to face a lot challenges by itself and democracy will help for making the right decision.

Democracy is like an expensive musical instrument. You do not benefit from it a lot when you just started to learn it and at the same time you are a poor guy and struggling for a living, but eventually it will lead you to a higher level of peace and enjoy.

The current situation in China isn’t pleasing. I do not have too much hope for my generation, i.e. those born in middle 70s. For most of my friends and myself, I do not see the necessary elements (experiences and ambitions) that are important to propagate democracy. One example, of the many students in U.S., only very few is willing to service in the student association. For the even younger generation, especially those in China right now, materialism seems to be prevailing.

Although the increasing usage of Internet, could be a chance to educate more people and make people aware of the policy making process. But it seems that will only happen when more open-minded leaders come into the play, and some of them could be from the current students in U.S.

The best solution, as once said by one of our famous leader Deng Xiaoping, is probably to start from kids.  To educate the younger generation and make more of them willing to be a leader, like to collaborate with others, and respect each other’s choices etc, would be one of the most useful things a government can try. In this respect, I do think that lots of money invested by China in higher education and research can be more meaningful if spent in elementary education. Private school might be another choice, but again, it is like chicken and egg dilemma: without the majority middle class, there wouldn’t be many private schools.

In short, I believe that the road to democracy in China will be rough but the government can play an important role.

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