http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=651#comments

Great post.

Lee Smolin's fantastic hype got Lisi listed as the next Einstein.
Awesome. The trouble with physics--the rise of string theory, the
fall of science, and what comes next--big physics pornography.

Eric writes on Peter's blog, "Eric Says:

February 10th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
What's really sad is that Discover magazine has a special issue this
month devoted to Einstein. One article in the magazine is a listing of
the `next Einstein'. Number one is the famous surfing, independent
physicist who just `published' a paper. Ed Witten is listed as number
six. This is really deplorable." --http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/
wordpress/?p=651#comments

You can read more about Garrett Lisi's theory, funded by FQXI (where
Smolin sits on the advisory panel) and heavily promoted by Smolin and
people associated with Smolin's $100-million+ "Big Physics" PI:

On Feb 10, 8:19 pm, rangermc...@gmail.com wrote:

On Feb 11, 5:19 am, rangermc...@gmail.com wrote:

rangermccoy@gmail.com wrote:

Dude, if you're going to be replying to your own posting, then you
better learn to snip out irrelevant parts of it. Don't quote the whole
thing over again.

Regarding this article, they did not interview one physicist who they
claim is part of "the consensus" that Lisi's theory can't work. I only
know of only two detractors who pointed out some flaws, Lubos Motl and
Jacques Distler. Motl argues that his theory doesn't conform with the
Coleman-Mandula Theorem; Lisi says CMT doesn't apply because of
different assumptions about the shape of space-time. Distler said that
fermions cannot be embedded in Lisi's theory; Lisi said he had pointed
that out himself in the original paper and that he said he was still
working on that part of the theory. Lee Smolin also pointed out some
flaws in Distler's thinking.