I’m sympathetic to Horgan’s claim that there’s something rotten in the state of science, I can get on board with the idea that our scientific luminaries are a bunch of asses and buffoons, and I’m even open to the possibility that large swaths of supposed scientific activity have basically become interpretative dance.

Physicists come off looking particularly bad. After attending a Stephen Hawking lecture about fantastical ideas like wormholes and superstrings and “mini-superspace,” Horgan concludes that Hawking is “less a truth seeker than an artist, an illusionist, a cosmic joker” whose work “can keep us awestruck. But it is not science.”