Very Little Gravitas Indeed – the final cut

I thought I was through with all this story after the previous post.

But I was surprised; looks like some people never understand when it’s time to stop.

So, she did it again. Gabriella Carlucci answered to Glashow’s letter. I thought it wasn’t really worth to comment on that, but since I’ve noticed of late quite some crowd accessing this blog, evidently interested in the matter, I thought I would owe you one last post. For Italian readers who are here looking for updates, I report them to here, or there, for a pretty complete outline.

For English-oriented readers, I profit from a translation kindly provided by our dear GC herself, which is reported below (I also could not resist to add a few comments – I swear these will be the last ones):

“Dear Prof. Glashow

Regretfully, your letter to President Prodi did not address any of the questions I raised in my previous letter: you only badly insulted me.”

Well, he only addressed the questions he was qualified to answer – could you spot a difference there with someone else ? – First: he never opposed Maiani for a job at CERN, nor did he ever cast doubt on his scientific competence, as SHE had stated in her first letter. Second: he confirmed, as an expert in the field, the relevant role played by Maiani and other Italian colleagues in high energy physics, violently questioned in Carlucci’s letter. The insults, I imagine, are referred to expressions like “slanderous letter, falsely claims , utterly invidious and untrue allegations, etc…”, contained in the Nobel laureate letter. You can judge yourself if this is insulting. If you find it so, then have a look again at her original attack on Maiani, and take a few minutes to ponder.

“I wish to inform you that the statements contained in that letter have been taken from Nature, from Lettere al Nuovo Cimento and from Italian newspapers. These statements have never been gainsaid.”

Here she looks a bit confused. Which statements ? Let’s progress in order: she never wrote statements TAKEN from Nature or Nuovo Cimento. Nature duly reported the criticism Maiani was receiving while director at CERN. And ten days later it hosted an interview to Maiani, in which he replied to the critics. So, the “statements” reported – and not endorsed – by Nature, had been gainsaid – opposed, denied, contradicted – already by Maiani himself. One year later (Dec. 2002), Nature was writing: “The closure of the Large Electron–Positron collider (LEP) in 2000 was the toughest and most controversial decision made by the current director general, Luciano Maiani, given the apparent signatures of the long-sought Higgs boson from the LEP detectors. Subsequent analysis has shown those signatures to be less suggestive than was originally thought.” Meaning, he had taken the right decision, like everybody in the field now recognize. The “Lettere al Nuovo Cimento” paper is a scientific document, titled: ”Is the 3104 MeV vector meson the psi_c or the Wo ?”. This statement indeed had not been gainsaid – nice sound this word, is it? -, but answered: it was indeed the psi_c (the charm).

The only place from which indeed Carlucci literally TOOK her statements was an Italian newspaper, Libero. Which, guess what, was later obliged to publish a denial.

“Today I am writing to ask you a very simple question: if Prof. Maiani and his colleagues are – as you pointed out – “stellar luminaries”, how come they have not received the Nobel Prize yet? This is surprising, also knowing that Italian particle physicists (and particularly those based in Rome) are among the best funded in the world, both in absolute terms and with respect to the other branches of Physics.”

The first sentence is so ludicrous it’s not really worth commenting it. Parisi himself (?) had done it in a reply to Carlucci, and I think he had been unbelievably polite. As one would be to a small child asking a similar question, I imagine. The second sentence I found more interesting – and worrying – in its double assumption that money can buy a Nobel prize, and that in Italy too much funds are devoted to fundamental research.

“I hope you will be so kind to reply to the points I raised without further insulting me.”

It looks like in Carlucci’s language, to insult is equivalent to disagree. I wonder from whom she could have learned such an attitude…

“And I also urge you not to lie:”

Coming from an expert. In detecting lies, of course, what were you thinking about ?

“I could easily surprise you.”

No, please, don’t. Not again!

“Best regards,

Gabriella Carlucci
P.S. To protect me from being insulted any further, Enzo Boschi wrote a note (in Italian) on this whole issue. Could you please comment on it?”

In the Italian original, the last phrase reads:”Mi faccia avere i suoi commenti”, i.e., “Let me have your comments!”. Had anybody inadvertently hit the “politeness-on” short-cut key in her automatic translator ?

“It is evident that you can read Italian.”

That’s why she’s writing him in English. Logical, isn’t it ?

P.S.: While I was writing, I’ve discovered there’s another one besides Parisi who has really a lot of patience. Sheldon Glashow:

http://www.puglialive.net/home/news_det.php?nid=10554

Dear Sra Carlucci,
Despite your earlier comments and whatever your sources may be, the fact is that I have never questioned Prof. Maiani’s stature as a superb and accomplished researcher. I am outraged that you have tarnished my own reputation by such a false and invidious allegation. It is true that several Italian theorists (including Maiani) are deserving of Nobel Prizes, but there are far more such candidates than Prizes. Recall that world-renowned physics luminaries such as Edward Witten, Stephen Hawking, Yoichiro Nambu, among many others, are not Nobel Laureates.
Whether (or not) Italian physicists have won Nobel Prizes, and whether (or not) they are well funded, they have made exceptional contributions to physics, at least as many as any other European nation.
Italy should be very proud of its many scientific heroes, and not malign them.
Sincerely
Sheldon Lee Glashow

UPDATE (March 3rd):

I know, I know, I swore I would not comment on this story again, but apparently it’s becoming the fable of the web, and since it’s evolving still and people are still accessing this blog for information, I find appropriate to give an update.

The case start to have some resonance outside the web. There has been another article on Libero (pdf version here), this time citing Carlucci and Boschi and basically repeating the attack. Espresso, Micromega and Repubblica (can’t find links yet) are also giving space to the case. And Gabriella Carlucci herself replies with a letter to Repubblica (pdf here) and had posted in her blog a series of documents that in her intention should support the accusations. Again, is rather unfortunate, but these documents only demonstrate that she had not read them. Among the many comments (all negatives, must be a sort of a record) appeared there, I point your attention to the replies of Giorgio Parisi and Alvaro de Rujula. You should know who the first one is if you have followed the matter. The second is probably the most reputed spanish physicist. He works at CERN, and had been involved by Carlucci who opened one of her documents with an e-mail written by him. I report below some excerpts from the reply. I apologize for the hasty translation from Italian (yes, De Rujula knows it pretty well – I think I spotted only a couple of errors in his long reply, much less than the average Carlucci score):

“The fact that my mail was not ad-personam (meaning, it wasn’t a critic to Maiani as director) appears evident from the content of the same mail”

“My mail does not mention Maiani. Contrary to that, my intention was to try to give maximum support to Maiani in his extremely difficult attempt to maintain CERN at the very good level of funding it used to have in the past.”

“The few times I was in disagreement with Maiani, I went and told him why. Sometimes I managed to convince him, sometimes I was convinced by him, as it is normal. But, he always listened to me. I never needed to raise a “popular front” against his person. Synthesizing, I don’t see where the mail could be interpreted as a critic to Maiani. How can one think Maiani did not have my same intentions ? He had, poor lad, the problem to manage a budget which had been approved with a funding a little lower than needed. And I’m saying ‘a little’. Let’s look in any other place how much is the difference between projected budgets and what had been eventually spent. Only a few laboratories, institutions and projects are able like CERN to make relatively accurate estimates of the costs, avoiding thus to go hopelessly in the red”

“Theoretical physicists make hypothesis, which is part of their job. The vast majority of such hypothesis are not true, nature is judging which ones are not. The hypothesis advanced by Maiani and his co-workers on the interpretation of the J/Psi particle was not true. A week after the discovery of that particle, half a dozen of different interpretations appeared on Physical Review Letters. All not true safe one, which happened, by chance, to be co-authored by me together with Glashow, just in case the reader would doubt whether I know what I am talking about. Among the false ones, there was one by Cheng Ning Yang, Nobel laureate for physics. Nobody thought about saying that such untrue interpretations had harmed the reputation of American or Chinese physics (Yang, for instance, is Chinese-American. The other ‘bad-ones’ of this story were mainly Americans). The greatest physicists in history did publish wrong results.”

“Even if my mail would have been highly critical and directed against Maiani in particular, it would not have been anything extraordinary. What is extraordinary is the effort done by the few ‘researchers’ who directly or indirectly are working to fill up with junk On. Sra. Carlucci’s blog. After weeks of work, they still didn’t manage to find anything convincing against Maiani! What had the Italians done in order to deserve all this? I don’t think it is a biblical curse, even if it looks like one.”

I really don’t understand what on earth is pushing On. Sra. Carlucci to become the best joke-of-the year, in Italy and possibly elsewhere. But, maybe, she is giving us a small hint in her post, when she says: “I publish here the documents appeared in Nature, in which (sic) one corroborates all [I have said]. Documents that were on purpose taken away from the web.“

So, there is a conspiration. Most likely a communist one. These people are hiding documents in the cyberspace, and have them reappearing at will. Just to have fun at the expense of poor On. Sra. Carlucci. Like what happened to the publications of Maiani after 1994, disappeared from the web just for the 5 minutes when On. Sra. Carlucci was making her Google Scholar search. Devilish fiends. I checked today, and all the Nature articles were already back in place (as they were last week). Very hard to catch these guys on the act, indeed.