Guest Post: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

I first met Chanda (briefly) when she was visiting the University of Chicago as a summer undergraduate research student. Since then we've corresponded occasionally about life as a physicist and which general relativity textbook is the best. She emailed me a thoughtful response to a couple of posts about string theory and the state of physics (here and here), and I thought it would be good to have those thoughts presented as a full-blown guest post rather than just a comment; happily, Chanda agreed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A few months ago, Sean posted an entry on this blog addressing his concerns about Dr. Lee Smolin's (then forthcoming) book, The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. Dramatically titled and well-hyped, Lee's book was sure to arouse strong emotions and plenty of debate on publication. However, it managed to do that even before ...