Who smeared Richard Feynman? (2014)

https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-feynman/

63•srean•1h ago

Comments

FrankWilhoit•1h ago

Plausible; also marginal. We already knew that Edward Teller made these kinds of accusations against a lot of people and thereby did much greater harm.

srean•1h ago

Teller would misspell Fermi and Fuchs' names ? That would be strange.

tclancy•1h ago

Counterpoint: nomative determinism.

wilkommen•57m ago

nominative

IAmBroom•26m ago

The joke, that was.

gerikson•55m ago

Would Teller have had to mail Hoover though? Or just let the concerned people know that Feynman was unsuitable.

KPGv2•54m ago

Are you alleging that the FBI interviewer unknowingly interviewed Teller who was posing, with a high degree of skill, as a woman known to be closely associated with Feynman?

Because the FBI interviewer refers to the interviewee with feminine pronouns.

nemomarx•23m ago

admittedly it would be really funny if Teller could just do that

sigwinch•36m ago

I don’t think Teller worked with Feynman.

delichon•17m ago

> and thereby did much greater harm.

This letter probably did him no harm. PSAC membership could only have distracted him from theoretical physics, which was his clear priority, and he likely would not have accepted if offered. He was a small government guy with contempt for bureaucracy. That may well have disqualified him as politically unreliable for some positions, but if it did he was the better for it. When he did accept a government position decades later on the Challenger Commission, it was strictly temporary, and his conclusions were not flattering powers that be.

  It would appear that, for whatever purpose, be it for internal or external consumption, the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product, to the point of fantasy.

It is difficult to see how his work or life would have been improved by formal government ties.

mellosouls•53m ago

(2014) Relevant because since then it's become quite trendy to throw mud at men like him.

chrismatic•46m ago

Not entirely without reason though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc

ecshafer•15m ago

That video is such an extremely weak argument. Sure Feynman probably has more fame than he is merited. But he is still one of the most influential physicists. He just also happened to be entertaining and wrote some books. Personality and self-marketing makes a difference, welcome to society.

chrismatic•8m ago

I'd recommend that you watch the entire video, because the point is that he did not even write any of those books.

srean•3m ago

I would say read up a little so that you are in a position to make up your own mind. Also compare the video recordings and published book to figure out whose material it was.

It's easy to throw muck at someone who is not around to defend.

ecshafer•2m ago

So someone took recordings of his stories and compiled them into a text....? What does that matter I have seen that entire video in the past, its unsubstantiated garbage that fails mild skepticism. Every point can be explained away trivially. They have an axe to grind against Fenyman / Men generally, and since this goes against the established narrative its therefore heralded as being correct and people blindly follow it.

poulpy123•14m ago

I cannot take seriously someone pretending that Feynman was a sham

chrismatic•9m ago

The video points out that the legacy not the man is a sham.

ecshafer•8m ago

There is just a big market for "X great person of the past was actually awful" and "what you learned in school is actually a conspiracy". That these things get spread like wildfire whenever they are brought up, because some people thinks it make them seem smarter I assume. They also drop all introspection or skepticism about it. I would put "Feynman is actually awful" in the same bucket as the "Mercator project is a racist conspiracy" (No one owns a globe apparently) or the multitude of "actually x woman is responsible for scientific advancement, not the man" stories that get spread around. They all fail at any real analysis.

cduzz•2m ago

Feynman did physics and told stories.

He was very serious about his physics and wrote that stuff down.

Someone else wrote down his stories. His stories were probably often not entirely accurate, and whomever wrote down his stories also probably had an agenda. So books "by feynman" should be treated with some caution since they're written not by feynman.

His physics and science are obviously not "a sham". It is in fact possible for someone to be great and awful at the same time.

glenstein•38m ago

I haven't seen many people going around saying Ed Witten is a security risk due to communist loyalties.

Analemma_•31m ago

Feynman really deserves it though: [0]. I admit to being part of the problem here, because in the 2000s and 2010s, I was in the Feynman cult with everyone else, but once you dig a little deeper under the quirky anecdotes (many of which are probably fictional), it’s clear he was kind of a scumbag and a lot of his reputation is whitewashing by what we’d now call fanboys.

If his wife did write that memo, I’d say she had pretty good justification.

[0]: https://www.tumblr.com/centrally-unplanned/76851065507251814...

woodruffw•25m ago

That link demonstrates that he deserved a domestic abuse charge, not that he was a communist. I think the latter is still a smear, insofar as the (speculated) author is seeking justice through any avenue afforded.

(I should note that I have never particularly liked or cared about Feynman or any of the 20th century cult-of-personality physicists.)

srean•20m ago

The stuff that the material in Feynman's book is not his is just made up nonsense. They follow his course lectures very very closely. The minutiae of writing may not be his, but the material certainly was his.

Regarding domestic abuse charges, this was before we had no fault divorce. It was common at that time to make up charges of abuse, often in concert with the lawyers of both parties just to ensure that divorce is granted.

So it is not a clear open and shut case at all.

poulpy123•9m ago

In the very first sentence, with the usage of "Feynman bros", we understand that it is not a text honestly discussing the limits and failures of Feynman (which would not be very interesting anyway), but a politically motivatedl attack against a man seen as too famous and influential.

an0malous•46m ago

hell hath no fury

rurban•27m ago

I thought it's known for a long time already that it was his second wife, from Boise, Idaho.

crazygringo•27m ago

This is actually kind of hilarious. That your ex-wife would write to the FBI to denounce your character a couple of months after the divorce.

I did really enjoy this detail:

> It was an extremely ugly, long (2 years!) divorce hearing: it made the newspapers because of Bell’s allegations of “extreme cruelty” by Feynman, including the notion that he spent all of his waking hours either doing calculus and playing the bongos.

Brilliant guy... but it is funny to think how nonstop bongos could definitely drive a spouse crazy.

srean•12m ago

Vindictiveness is a real thing.

ricardo81•22m ago

The problem with extremely smart people is not many people understand them. They're typically going to be non-conformist in any event, and may come across as arrogant if they have an intricate belief system that you may not take the time to understand. I'd think one of the greatest scientists of a generation would have the kind of depth of thinking that few would understand. Having listened to many of his interviews (unfortunately I'm too young to have witnessed these things in real time) he comes across as one of the most eloquent people I can think of.

While reading through that I was suspecting it was perhaps a peer that was envious of Feynman, but an ex (scorned?) partner is extremely plausible.

abtinf•17m ago

> The problem with extremely smart people is not many people understand them. They're typically going to be non-conformist in any event, and may come across as arrogant if they have an intricate belief system that you may not take the time to understand.

This is the bucket Ayn Rand falls into. Her philosophy is radically different, revolutionizing the entire field, to the point that most people can’t even grasp that the things she questions are open to debate.

jcranmer•1m ago

> The problem with extremely smart people is not many people understand them.

I know this is a common trope in many media portrayals, but it's really not my experience. The "insufferable genius" stereotype tracks most not for the extremely smart people but the kinda-smart people who are absolute jerks but try to defend their jerkassery on the basis of their intelligence.

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