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The Rise of the Science Populists with Sam Gregson and Tim Henke (Patreon)

Published:
2026-02-07 22:38:10
Imported:
2026-02
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Content

In this interview episode, we are joined by physicists Sam Gregson (Bad Boy of Science YouTube Channel) and Tim Henke to examine the rise of science populism: a style of science communication that borrows the tactics of political populism, including grievance narratives, institutional distrust, and conspiratorial framing, while presenting its advocates as lone truth-tellers battling a corrupt academic elite.

We discuss how DTG favourites like Sabine Hossenfelder and Eric Weinstein, as well as fresh new faces Brian Keating and Avi Loeb, deploy selective truths about physics to fuel self-aggrandising, anti-expert narratives.

Along the way, we discuss: Why “physics hasn’t progressed in 50 years” is a rhetorical sleight of hand, why cranks are useful props for populist arguments, the strange obsession with Nobel Prizes and elite validation and how science populism mirrors broader political populism

If you are interested in guru dynamics, science communication, and physics crankery, this might just be the episode for you.

Links

Bad Boy of Science (Sam Gregson)

Tim's Profile Website

Bad Boy of Science – The Rise of Physics Populisers

Theories of Everything (Kurt Jaimungal)

Losing the Nobel Prize – Brian Keating

Into the Impossible (Brian Keating)

Sabine Hossenfelder’s YouTube Channel

The Portal (Eric Weinstein)

The Galileo Project (Avi Loeb)

Sean Carroll – Mindscape / Preposterous Universe

Not Even Wrong (Peter Woit)

Comments

Rich F

I love parreon telling me to "be the first to join the discussion". There's no discussion to join! This would be an initiation of discussion, if anything. But as you can see, im not able to do that. Ah, the good old Internet. I'm still first tho, right?

Linda Sears

I hope they get into the woo-woo use of quantum physics. That’s my personal bugbear when it comes to physics.

Rich F

Agh. Linda! Beat me to it. Also said intelligent, relevant things. Damn she's good.

Rich F

No. Wait. The order, like the list of posts? Ah. It doesn't matter. No more typing for me. Goodnight.

Linda Sears

I like what one of your guests, I believe it was Henke, said about scientists disagreeing with each other because they have different theoretical or evidentiary reasons while people like Sabine just accuse those who disagree with her of not caring about science or something crazy like that. For me, that is not only unfair to the other scientist, but it is also a boring reason to disagree with the other scientist because we don’t learn anything new.

Yoko Swagman

Tim’s analogy comparing classical mechanics in a frictionless environment to quantum mechanics in other abstracted universes was very helpful to me for getting a feel for the theoretical work that people are doing.

Stephen McGlinchey

Why don't they just "vibe" it with chatgpt like the Uber guy? Sorry I'll get my coat

Martin 🇧🇻

I, too, have lost a Nobel prize! I mean, I have never got one, so that is the same thing as losing one, right?

Martin 🇧🇻

These people (Eric Weinstein, Sabine etc.) all think they are Semmelweis. The thing is, Semmelweis was an arrogant prick, which actually made it harder to get his medical doctrine accepted by the medical community. So that is the only thing they actually seem to have in common with him.

Linda Sears

I really appreciated the acknowledgment of how much physicists have accomplished in the last 100 years and that, because of that enormous progress and the greater complexity of what they are trying to figure out based on these seismic changes in our understanding, it can appear that they are now not doing anything of note. It’s like Peter Thiel getting upset about us not having flying cars even though huge technological changes are occurring.

George

Not a science guy by any measure so it was interesting hearing the playbook of the science populists and the point around conspiracists/cranks/anti-institutionists being inherently more engaging. Because it shows that whether it's politics or health or science or whatever it is, you can copy and paste this approach. And maybe it suggests that yes, people are susceptible to the allure of someone saying everything you've been told is wrong, follow me to learn the truth. It's an easy and exciting way out.

Linda Sears

Great episode. It’s good to hear scientists speak out against the weird phenomenon of science populists. At the end they mentioned why good science communication is important and what happened with the Superconducting Super Collider in the early 90s. I remember all the excitement about that happening in our neck of the woods. Had it been completed, it would have been built really close to where I live, which would have been super cool. We missed the boat on that one.

Frances goulart

Good stuff, gentlemen. I feel smarter ( ok, better informed). Hope you'll do another round!!!👍

Frances goulart

" The biggest crime in pedagogy"!!! That punch landed!!!

K

My two favorite types of DTG episodes: Conversations with guests who know what they're talking about and clowning on absolute crackpots

Kyle Wilson

So many different British accents here

Nat J

Bas van Fraassen is a pretty well-respected philosopher of science. His positions are kind of nutty, but his arguments are worth engaging with. He argues that science is purely useful for predicting how everyday objects will act. It’s our single best too for engineering projects. But it doesn’t tell us anything about the deep nature of reality, since it’s all models and we know that the models are inaccurate. Which sounds like something quite a few scientists would agree with until van Fraassen starts saying that electrons and atoms don’t exist. (Because science doesn’t tell us what exists. That’s not its job)

Paul Ditta

Love this episode. Vibe physics does my head in, but this idea that anyone without training can intelligently criticise the output of experts makes my cheese curdle.

Michael Ball

You guys should check out David Tong. He's a professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge, and in my opinion might be the best explainer of physics in the world. He has lots of public talks on YouTube. He also has lecture notes on basically all of theoretical physics free on his homepage. He's currently writing his first popular physics book as well!

John Pohl

I was doing some work related to this issue and came across this interesting work in Nature from 2023 titled "Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time" by Park et al. The authors contend (based on their data) that if less new discovery is occurring, it might be due to 1) issues related to hyperspecialization and 2) changing priorities of funding agencies, donors, etc. Good podcast!

Joanna Mulvaney

matt is spot on with his point about them reacting like this because they are disappointed that their projects turned out to be not world changing or fundable. hitting the point where you realise you’ve gone down a dead end and your career is done (cough cough me when my crispr mouse had no phenotype) can be very tough. if you are a narcissist rather than going off to find something else to do, obviously it’s everyone else un the world who is wrong, not you.

commutercomputer

Haven't listened the episode to the end, but methods of physics gurus were similar to the methods of Richard Dawkins when he attacked on Catholic church. You just replace physics with the Church (Note I'm saying this as an atheist who has no connection to Catholic church or culture). Everything is bullshit and nothing good has come from the church ever. If I recall correctly in the god delusion Dawkins argued that priesthood in the church prevented most intelligent people in the medieval Europe passing down their genes (due to the policy of celibacy), which is just plain wrong. Edit. After listening episode I was thinking that one reason that the physics gurus are so popular is that in the popular culture and discourse exponential growth and development is so popular narrative. This expectation is impossible to meet in fundamental physics because in real life law of diminishing returns kicks in. Based on my understanding in nature purely exponential growth doesn't really exists very long before it changes to logistical growth. After the low hanging fruits have been picked up more money and effort needs to be done in order to achieve smaller advances in fundamental physics. Because there's mismatch between peoples expectation and actual progress it creates opportunities for gurus and grifters.

Zendegi Leonard

That was just lovely to listen too. Bobbi Broccoli is a great communicator

Amy S

After hearing this episode, I wonder what y’all thought of the movie Good Will Hunting.

pr

This was a great episode. 👍🏻