Is Michoi Kaku a fraud?

[Dida]

This guy is on TV all the time talking about all kind of fantastical stuff. Most recently he's on Fox News saying a huge solar storm is about to hit earth and we may be thrown back 100 years, etc. Is this guy really credited in the scientific community or is he just a talking head? Is civilization as we know it about to end or is this guy just spewing nonsense?

 

[Kozmos]

I have one of his older books Parallel Worlds and it is okay, from what I've gathered he is usually a decent guy but the recent media blitz got him totally unscientific and sensationaly.

 

[Cutlass]

There is a solar storm. It's resulting in some amazing peaks of the Northern Lights, and some rerouting of northern airline flights.

Civilization as we know it is not about to end.

 

[pi-r8]

It's not really fair to call him a fraud, since he has authored many legitimate scientific research papers. But I think they were all written back in the 70's and 80's, and since then he's just focused on "popularizing" science. Also his research was in string theory, which hasn't turned out quite as promising as it once seemed.

My guess is that he's mainly concerned with getting young people interested in science, and convincing politicians to fund it properly, and isn't particularly concerned with the exact literal truth of his pop science stuff.

 

[Leoreth]

Scientific community doesn't matter anyway, asking for qualifications just serves as an ad hominem attack, so he could just as well be right as he could be wrong as there's no objective way to tell.

I don't know but my gut says maybe.

 

[shadowplay]

I think he is/was a legitimate physicist, but he seems to have lost his rocker. He's a sensationalist, that's for sure. He was also a regular on Art Bell's radio show back in the day, which is enough to make me take just about anything he says with a huge grain of salt.

 

[woody60707]

I think he is/was a legitimate physicist, but he seems to have lost his rocker. He's a sensationalist, that's for sure. He was also a regular on Art Bell's radio show back in the day, which is enough to make me take just about anything he says with a huge grain of salt.

He was really good on Art Bell. You have a physicist talking to a people who believe in UFOs and Remote viewing. And yet he calmly explained why none of that makes sense.

A lot of good scientist say doom and gloom stuff. Just because a person has a PHD doesn't mean they can't be wrong.

 

[Eat_Up_Martha]

I've watched a few interviews with him and, while he certainly tends to focus on 'speculative' science, I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe that he's a fraud. Can we get a link to the interview OP?

 

[SparrowHawk77]

He is a legitimate physicist. He writes popular books that many people are familiar with, but he has also authored graduate level text books on Quantum Field Theory, and String Theory.

See:
http://www.amazon.com/Strings-Confo...20/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1327553330&sr=8-19

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-...01/ref=sr_1_26?ie=UTF8&qid=1327553330&sr=8-26

http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Field...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327553448&sr=1-1

 

[Shaihulud]

Here is the link from 2010, sounds quite legitimate I think.

 

[Narz]

I've listened to a lot of his stuff on Youtube.

There is a solar storm. It's resulting in some amazing peaks of the Northern Lights, and some rerouting of northern airline flights.

Civilization as we know it is not about to end.

The American empire will never die, ever!

Here is the link from 2010, sounds quite legitimate I think.

Man those Fox news commentators are embarrassing.

I agree with him 100% about building redundancy & resiliency into our systems. Not going to happen though because it's all about the benjis.

You better believe the ultra-rich have their systems backed up though.

 

[Eat_Up_Martha]

Here is the link from 2010, sounds quite legitimate I think.

Thanks! He's definitely sensationalizing a low-probability/high-impact event, but nothing remotely fraudulent from my perspective.

Really, you can probably expect this kind of behaviour from a person who is trying to popularize science among the masses. It's these huge events and crazy breakthroughs that captivate the public awareness and raise support and funding. It's probably a little dishonest, science is usually pretty mundane, but I'd argue that it's necessary in a country that actually seems to be not just indifferent to scientific inquiry, but outright hostile.

 

[Shaihulud]

Well it is a once in a hundred years kind of things, and it did happen in the 50's. With our society more dependant on electronics, a catastrophe of similar scale would paralyse the World.

 

[emzie]

Scientific community doesn't matter anyway, asking for qualifications just serves as an ad hominem attack, so he could just as well be right as he could be wrong as there's no objective way to tell.

I don't know but my gut says maybe.

There's nothing wrong with asking for credentials, no more than making sure you're being treated by a doctor.

It's another thing to say because someone is not a doctor, he or she cannot argue a valid point, or that because they're a doctor, the view point is basked up by their credentials.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It's not really fair to call him a fraud, since he has authored many legitimate scientific research papers. But I think they were all written back in the 70's and 80's, and since then he's just focused on "popularizing" science. Also his research was in string theory, which hasn't turned out quite as promising as it once seemed.

My guess is that he's mainly concerned with getting young people interested in science, and convincing politicians to fund it properly, and isn't particularly concerned with the exact literal truth of his pop science stuff.

The way to really popularize science is to revive Carl Sagan, cure his cancer, rejuvenate him, and have him make another updated "Cosmos" series. A fair number of people have tried to equal his achievements in the past 30 years, and nobody has succeeded.

Unless, of course, you happen to be Sir David Attenborough, who did for botany/zoology what Carl Sagan did for astronomy, the history of science, and the possibility of life elsewhere.

As for this solar storm... I looked up tonight and never saw any indication of the Northern Lights. The stuff about being thrown back 100 years - WTF? That is complete nonsense of the sort that von Daniken or Velikovsky would write. In other words, it's pure garbage, not a bit of truth to it.

A solar storm could be thought of as the Sun letting loose with a huge sneeze and not having a kleenex handy - it's inconvenient for everybody who happens to be in the way, but nothing to worry about unless you happen to be taking a space walk at the time.

 

[Lillefix]

That is complete nonsense of the sort that von Daniken or Velikovsky would write. .

In all fairness. Von Daniken would write that Aliens were attacking. Or it were the remains of Alien explosives or something.

 

[Smellincoffee]

The way to really popularize science is to revive Carl Sagan, cure his cancer, rejuvenate him, and have him make another updated "Cosmos" series. A fair number of people have tried to equal his achievements in the past 30 years, and nobody has succeeded.

Unless, of course, you happen to be Sir David Attenborough, who did for botany/zoology what Carl Sagan did for astronomy, the history of science, and the possibility of life elsewhere.

As for this solar storm... I looked up tonight and never saw any indication of the Northern Lights. The stuff about being thrown back 100 years - WTF? That is complete nonsense of the sort that von Daniken or Velikovsky would write. In other words, it's pure garbage, not a bit of truth to it.

A solar storm could be thought of as the Sun letting loose with a huge sneeze and not having a kleenex handy - it's inconvenient for everybody who happens to be in the way, but nothing to worry about unless you happen to be taking a space walk at the time.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is working on a new version of Cosmos. He's not as strong an author as Sagan, but he knows how to address an audience. I've become quite a fan of his StarTalk podcast.

At the moment I'm reading Phil Plait's Death from the Skies!, and he does mention the remote possibility that some kinds of solar activity could disrupt life on earth significantly. There's no legitimate reason to be concerned about it, though, given the low likelihood of such events.

 

[Leoreth]

There's nothing wrong with asking for credentials, no more than making sure you're being treated by a doctor.

It's another thing to say because someone is not a doctor, he or she cannot argue a valid point, or that because they're a doctor, the view point is basked up by their credentials.

Sorry, sometimes I forget to make my sarcasm clear on the internet. I agree with you

 

[Winner]

Michio Kaku...

... isn't that the pop-science guy who opposes the use of nuclear energy of any type in space? I mean the one who opposed the hugely successful Cassini-Hyugens mission to Saturn-Titan because the probe was powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator*? The one who said that if the probe somehow re-entered the atmosphere, the plutonium would be released and cause a huuuuuuge contamination?

Spoiler :

* - Because that far from the sun, there is no other sensible way to provide enough power to such a probe.

Oh yes, it's him.

A sensationalist buffoon

 

[Narz]

The stuff about being thrown back 100 years - WTF? That is complete nonsense of the sort that von Daniken or Velikovsky would write. In other words, it's pure garbage, not a bit of truth to it.

What's the basis for this opinion?