Science channels on YouTube and popular scientists

I'm a big fan of science YouTube channels and popular scientists in general. Yesterday, I was thinking about them and what I would say to somebody else if they asked for recommendations. I woke up this morning and decided to blog about it.

Let me start with my two favourites--PBS Spacetime with Matt O'Dowd and Fermilab with Don Lincoln. These are both really informative and interesting. Both commentators are actualy physicists, which is a big plus. Matt talks mostly about astrophysics, and Don talks mostly about particle physics, but there's a lot of overlap between the material they cover. Matt is also entertaining, and Don sometimes goes into the math, which a lot of popular commentators don't do. I'm not a physicist myself, but I get the impression that the information these two people present on their channels is pretty solid and reliable. The only exception is that at the end of each video, Don says, "Physics is everything," which we know isn't true. :-)

The Science Asylum with Nick Lucid is another one I really like. It's more whimsical than the other two, but Nick still provides some pretty solid information in an easily digestible way. I don't think Nick has a PhD in physics, though. I think he has a master's degree. But he has taught physics professionally, and he wrote a book on advanced physics, so I think that's good enough.

Another really good one is Looking Glass Universe with Mithuna Yoganathan. She started her channel when she was a PhD candidate studying quantum computing. She made a lot of videos she animated herself while she was taking classes, and it's all really interesting, easy to understand, and fun to watch. She finally got her PhD, but she doesn't make as many vidoes as she used to. :-(

Anton Petrov is a wonderful person and he thinks you are a wonderful person. At the beginning of each video, he never fails to say, "Hello, wonderful person!" I like him so much, I bought his "wonderful person" t-shirt so everybody else will know that I'm a wonderful person. I don't know what his qualifications are, but it doesn't matter as much for the information he presents. He doesn't really teach physics or cosmology the way the other channels do. Instead, he summarizes recents papers he finds in scientific journals. Usually, it's some new finding in astronomy or astrophysics. Anton is the most prolific of all the people I watch. He posts a new videos pretty much every single day.

Those are my five favourites and the ones I value the most. Usually, I prefer to watch people who have actual PhD's in physics, or if the channel is about some other field of science, that the person is qualified. I mostly apply this to physics and cosmology, though, since that's where my greatest interests lie. But I also watch stuff in other fields. One of my favourite channels is PBS Eons that talks about the history of the planet and life on the planet. I have no idea what the qualifications of the people are on that channel, but I still enjoy it. There's another one that's more about math called PBS Infinite Series that is no longer active.

There are a few people who are legitimate scientists but who I watch with a lot of caution. Two of them I'm especially cautious about are Michio Kaku and Neil deGrass Tyson. The reason I'm cautious about them is because they are both sensationalists. They both seem to get a kick out of saying whatever they believe will evoke the most shock and awe in their audience. Michio, especially, has a tendency to wander into philosophy. He does it with the same confidence with which he comments on science, but with nowhere near the competence. For example, I remember one time watching him supposedly settle the free will debate by pointing to quantum indeterminancy as if he thought random quantum events were sufficient for free will. I've also seen Neil deGrass Tyson in conversations with Richard Dawkins in which Tyson will make what he seems, by his body language and inflection, to believe is some profound insight only to have Dawkins correct him and make him look silly. While I think each of these two people have a lot of interesting and valuable things to say, I think they should be treated with a lot of caution. And, by the way, I have read Kaku's book, Physics of the Impossible, and it's really interesting.

There's a channel called Physics Girl that I rarely ever watch. The reason I rarely watch it is because I don't think Physics Girl has any advanced degree in science. I think she has a bachelor degree in physics or something. I can't really say how reliable she is.

Arvin Ash has a channel I like, but I'm cautious about him, too. One of the things I really like about him is that he's a very good communicator. There are two problems with him, though. One is that I think he only has a bachelor degree in engineering. The other is that he doesn't always know what he's talking about. I remember one time he was talking about how space and time are quantized. I looked into that two or three years ago because I was trying to get to the bottom of it when I was thiking about the grim reaper paradox, and what I found is that nobody really knows whether space and time are quantized. Ash acted as if it were just a settled matter that they were. And there have been other things he's said that I questioned. He made a video fairly recently on fine-tuning that was downright cringeworthy for what he got wrong.

Sabine Hossenfelder is another YouTuber I really like. I wasn't sure if I liked her in the beginning because she always seemed angry. She is an interesting character. She is a qualified physicists, which makes me want to trust her as a reliable source. My primary hesitation is that she's a bit of a rebel in the physics community. A lot of the information she has is criticism of the rest of the physics community. For example, she criticizes a lot of what physicists do as not being science (e.g. the multiverse and string theory are not science because they are untestable). She wrote a book called Lost In Math where she criticized physicists for the kinds of things they look for in their theories, like elegence. Brian Green wrote a book called The Elegent Universe that I read several years ago where he explained, convincingly in my opinion, why physicists gravitate toward elegant equations. It seems to be a somewhat reliable guide. But Hossenfelder is really critical of it. Since I'm no expert myself, I can't really judge for sure, but the fact that Hossenfelder goes against the majority of scientists on a lot of issues makes me want to treat her with some skepticism. On the other hand, I like that there are scientists who are willing to challenge received wisdom. After all, science is all about progressing by testing and falsifying older views. So I fully support what she's doing. And it does, after all, make her very interesting. One other issue I have with her is that she often delves into the philosophy of science. A lot of scientists seem to wander into philosophy, sometimes without realizing they're doing it, and they usually don't do it very well. At least in Hossenfelder's case, she deals with the philosophy of science, so it's at least related to her field.

Speaking of Brian Greene, he has a channel called World Science Festival. Greene is another popularizer who likes to wow his audience, but I am not as cautious about him as I am about Tyson and Kaku. He seems to be a bit more tame and aimed toward truth and accuracy over pizzazz. So I trust him for the most part. I also like him because he is a really good communicator, whether he's speaking or writing. I've read two of his books and they are two of my favourites. My only hesitation about Brian Greene is the confidence he has in string theory. Considering the fact that string theory is not testable, I think it ought to be treated with a lot more hesitation.

I place Sean Carroll on about the same footing as Brian Greene. He's not quite as good of a communicator, but as far as accuracy and reliabliity goes, I trust him about as much. My only hesitation with him is the confidence he places in the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

I didn't include scientific authors I like to read in this post because I was mainly aimed at YouTubers and speakers you can find on YouTube. Maybe I'll do another post later on authors I like. I may have left somebody out. If so, I'll edit this later. But in the meantime, if there's some YouTuber or popular scientist you like to read or listen to, leave a comment and tell me about them.