The Screwy Universe

I've been meaning to post about the claim that experimenters have demonstrated that the proton/electron mass ratio is changing with time. Although it's a fascinating discovery if true, there's something that doesn't quite smell right about it. So I hit on the idea of first posting about the idea of physics claims not "smelling" right more generally. But then I thought that such a post would necessarily involve a careful exposition of one particular example. So it's time for the story of the Screwy Universe. In April 1997, while a postdoc at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, I received an email from George Field, who had been my Ph.D. advisor. He was suggesting that I take a look at a news article that had appeared on the front page of the New York Times. George is one of my favorite people in the whole world, and I owe whatever success I may have had as a scientist to his insightful guidance in my early career. But okay, I was busy, and didn't immediately look at the article -- lots of crazy stuff appears in the NYT, after all.