This is the story of how a circle of popular science communicators, who built their brands on championing free inquiry, worked to suppress scientific critique. Of how Eric Weinstein, the man who condemns the scientific community for suppressing his and his family’s work, nearly succeeded in cancelling me through intimidation and false threats. And of how Sabine Hossenfelder spins the truth for the sake of audience capture and podcast hosts Brian Keating and Curt Jaimungal prioritize tribe loyalty over the scientific process. In revealing personal details I have kept private for years, this account shows the lengths to which the individuals involved have gone in order to deceive the public. 

---

Science communication, at its best, serves a noble purpose: to act as a bridge between the intricate, often intimidating world of scientific research and the public’s curiosity. Skilled communicators translate complexity into clarity, demystify the scientific process, and inspire a shared sense of wonder. Yet a growing and troubling trend has emerged: the rise of the contrarian science communicator. These are not easily dismissed cranks. They are skilled performers who blend legitimate science with dubious claims, making it hard to separate the valuable from the misleading.

One of the most prominent examples is the contrarian physics subculture centered around Eric Weinstein, which includes Sabine Hossenfelder, Brian Keating, and Curt Jaimungal. These figures command millions of followers across social media and have built their reputations by tackling charged topics in physics, such as the validity of string theory or the claim that theoretical physics faces a crisis. Their YouTube channels feature long, thoughtful discussions with leading physicists like Roger Penrose and Leonard Susskind, and both Hossenfelder and Keating are professional physicists with undeniable expertise in their respective areas. Taken at face value, their content and profiles thus suggest that they are doing a valuable service in making science accessible and entertaining to the public.

But this engagement with legitimate science conceals a concerted effort to suppress criticism and mislead the public. The deception exposes the central problem facing these prominent science communicators: they are willing to trade scientific integrity for audience capture and tribal loyalty. A prime example of this dilemma is that of Weinstein’s so-called “Geometric Unity” (GU), a proposed theory of everything first unveiled in 2013 and revived in the 2020s through podcast appearances. Despite its lack of seriousness as a scientific theory, GU continues to be entertained by Hossenfelder, Keating, and Jaimungal. As an author of the first scientifically-detailed rebuttal of GU, I have directly witnessed how this contrarian cohort reacts when their ideas or allies face substantive criticism. It lays bare their gross hypocrisy of claiming to be champions for unorthodox views while working hard to ignore or suppress challenges to one of their own. This post is a firsthand account of their campaign to silence dissent.

Note: In what follows, I will discuss Geometric Unity as if it were unambiguously known to be unserious and flawed. For those uncertain or new to the subject, this will be justified later in the section “The Jury Is Already In”.

The Eric Weinstein Affair: A Short Recap

Eric Weinstein wears many hats. With a PhD in mathematics from Harvard, he has worked as a managing director of Thiel Capital, founded the “Intellectual Dark Web,” and regularly comments on a wide range of topics on popular podcasts. Crucially however, Weinstein sits squarely outside the scientific establishment, having left academia a few years after completing his doctorate in the early 1990s with only a single published and forgotten paper. His Geometric Unity proposal, therefore, has all the hallmarks of an outsider attempting to revolutionize physics, casting him as an Einstein-like figure toiling alone at the patent office.

But the noteworthy aspect of GU is not its scientific merit or lack thereof. Rather, it is how GU ties into Eric Weinstein’s narrative of being an outcast decrying the profound failures of our institutions. Indeed, Weinstein has built his public persona around the concept of a “Distributed Idea Suppression Complex” (DISC), an alleged establishment in academia and science that marginalizes or silences brilliant outsiders with revolutionary ideas. Within this framework, GU is presented as a transformative proposal that powerful institutions are too fearful to engage with. This creates a self-reinforcing loop: when physicists ignore the work, it confirms that the DISC is real, but when they criticize it, they are cast as bad-faith agents protecting their entrenched paradigms. In this way, Geometric Unity functions as a foundation for Weinstein’s personal brand of scientific and institutional grievances.

Until April 2021, the only public material on GU was a YouTube video of Weinstein’s highly technical 2013 Oxford lecture. That few could follow it allowed Weinstein’s grievances to go unchecked. The situation changed in February 2021 when a detailed scientific rebuttal, authored by myself and Theo Polya, was released.¹ My critique directly tested Weinstein’s narrative: how would he respond to the thorough feedback he long claimed to want, which was free from the institutional and academic conventions he so strongly condemned?² The outcome was that instead of engaging with the substance of the critique, Weinstein and his circle deployed a playbook of tactics designed to suppress, deflect, and protect his contrarian brand at all costs. 

The Anatomy of the Grift

Suppress Your Critics 

When I initially released my response paper to Geometric Unity in 2021, unknown to the public, Weinstein immediately tried to suppress it. Now that four years have passed, and the risk of personal drama overshadowing the scientific legitimacy of the rebuttal is gone, I feel that the time has come to reveal the full story. 

The most direct incident concerns Weinstein’s attempt to block my podcast episode on Eigenbros, a show specializing in physics hosted by two physics graduates. In our episode, I presented a two-hour whiteboard lecture giving a gentle exposition of my paper and a refutation of Weinstein’s baseless claim that he had originally discovered what are now known as the Seiberg-Witten equations. Our episode was released on Friday June 18, 2021. The following morning I received a message from Eigenbros on Discord, who wanted to speak to me on the phone. What they revealed was utterly despicable. 

Weinstein had called them earlier and implied that if they kept the video online, there could be “legal action”. The intimidation worked; Eigenbros took the video down for the better part of that Saturday. In response, I immediately reassured them that the threat was a baseless bluff: what would be the basis for legal action? The copyright notice on his Geometric Unity paper? Bullshit. After my phone call with Eigenbros, the video went back up. Rumors circulated about Weinstein’s potential involvement in the disruption, e.g. in a Facebook thread shown below. 

But at the request of the hosts who wanted to avoid public controversy, I never spoke of the situation publicly until now. This is the suppression incident I alluded to in my interview in the following month with Bob Wright, which Bob duly noted in his retrospective of our conversation. 

In fact, Weinstein’s suppression efforts began months earlier. Immediately after our paper’s release, Curt Jaimungal, a friend of Weinstein and host of the popular Theories of Everything podcast, reached out to invite me and my co-author on his show. He proposed a date “6-8 weeks” out, which in hindsight was clearly meant to coordinate with Weinstein’s own paper release on April 1st. I agreed to the interview, noting my co-author’s wish for anonymity. Curt was pleased and said he would follow up.

But the follow-up never came. When I reached out in May, Curt punted, citing a hectic schedule. The truth about the situation came out a month later during the Eigenbros affair. In his call, Weinstein revealed to the hosts that Curt had cancelled his interview with me. It’s not hard to put two and two together: Weinstein told Curt to call off my interview and then tried to use that cancellation as leverage to discredit me.

We thus have a disturbing truth. Eric Weinstein, the man who waxes poetic about a Distributed Idea Suppression Complex, is a hypocrite willing to use his own influence to squash criticism. Weinstein’s grievances and tale of persecution are frequently invoked to serve his narrative, yet when he receives opposition, he is willing to use his own power to suppress others.

Attack the Person, Not the Science

A month after the release of the GU paper, Weinstein was asked publicly about my critique in a now infamous Clubhouse discussion, hosted by Brian Keating, a close friend of Weinstein, distinguished professor of physics at UC San Diego, and host of the popular Into the Impossible podcast. When pressed on scientific details, Weinstein didn’t address the physics and instead demanded to know the identity of my anonymous co-author Theo Polya.³ Furthermore, he launched into an incoherent word salad of accusations about Theo Polya (and thus by extension myself), invoking references to misogyny, rape jokes, and 4chan. To borrow a phrase of Weinstein’s during his recent debate with Sean Carroll: “How dare you Eric”. 

The takeaway from that cringeworthy session was that Weinstein, together with Keating, refused to engage with our critique because they didn’t know who Theo Polya was. I feel it is hardly worth stating but I’ll do so anyway: what does the anonymity of one of two authors have to do with the merits of a critique? If Geometric Unity is so visionary, why would it matter? It’s a classic bait-and-switch. Weinstein, who demands his ideas be judged on merit alone, retreats from the science and falls back on personal attacks as soon as his ideas are actually challenged. 

Protect Your Tribe 

It is illuminating to see how Sabine Hossenfelder, Brian Keating, and Curt Jaimungal have been continuing to bolster Weinstein over the years, either directly through promoting his ideas when they know better or else indirectly by amplifying ambiguity about the status of his work.

I already discussed how Curt was complicit in cancelling my interview, which would have been critical of GU. Despite the seriousness he projects by hosting top scientists, he continues to treat GU as a substantive proposal, inviting many guests to give their (uninformed) opinion on GU while giving zero attention to the singularly critical work that is my rebuttal.⁴ In fact, he requested a copy of my interview from Eigenbros when the video was briefly taken down, though he has never made any reference to it whatsoever. Even if one were to suppose Curt had disagreements with the critique, he is someone who platforms people with a diversity of viewpoints, including outsiders like Chris Langan and UAP specialists. That Curt would compromise his intellectual openness and rigor in order to promote and protect Weinstein is a tragic consequence of tribalism. 

A similar and more pronounced story holds for Brian Keating, Weinstein’s most prominent promoter and staunch defender. Indeed, Brian continually hosts Eric Weinstein on his podcast (over 30 times as of this writing), many of which explicitly promote Geometric Unity. His strong support of Weinstein takes on many forms, including hosting him as a scholar in residence and speaker at UC San Diego, expressing interest in experimentally testing GU, and inviting scientists to engage with Weinstein and his work (here, here, and here). So if there is anyone else other than Weinstein who has a vested interest in getting to the bottom of my critique of GU, it would be Brian.

Two weeks after the release of my response paper and shortly after Sabine hosted my blogpost, Theo Polya and I sent the following message to Brian:

We received no response, not even a reply to ask “Who is Theo Polya?”, the question used by both Weinstein and Brian in their Clubhouse discussion two months later to deflect engaging with our critique.

A few months after this email, I was contacted by Brandon Van Dyck shortly after he heard of my appearance on Wright’s podcast to record a follow-up interview (later provocatively titled “The Eric Weinstein/Timothy Nguyen Affair”). By pure coincidence, Brian had reached out to Brandon at the same time, expressing an interest in being on Brandon’s show. Brandon and I took the opportunity to propose to Brian that he could have a conversation with me (either about Weinstein, his book Losing the Nobel Prize, or any other topic of his choosing). In response, Brian withdrew his self-invitation, saying he was “not interested”, as we discussed in our interview. The dodging continued when Michael Shermer and I publicly invited both Brian and Eric Weinstein for a discussion with me on Michael’s podcast (here and here), after Michael was unsuccessful in asking Brian privately to participate. Again, no response.

It’s one thing to be unwilling to speak to critics. Casting aspersions on them to avoid defending your position is another matter entirely. On other podcasts, Brian has claimed I am not acting in good-faith and that I’m trying to “bait” him, which are just additional examples of how Brian is going after the messenger rather than sticking to the science. The simple truth is that he and Weinstein have refused every opportunity to address the criticisms of GU in order to keep the charade running. Brian’s criticism of my character is also difficult to process in light of Weinstein’s attack of me on Clubhouse and the attempted suppression of my work. It is an embarrassing state of affairs to see a distinguished professor of physics so obviously acting in bad-faith.

Finally, we get to Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist with over 1.5 million followers on YouTube who has built a reputation for giving sharp no-nonsense scientific critiques. Her role in the GU affair is more complicated and, in my case, unfortunate. Until recently, Sabine had been dismissive of Weinstein’s work. However, a recent video of hers (titled Physicists are afraid of Eric Weinstein — and they should be) paints a very different picture. In it, she waffles all over the place about her opinion of Weinstein’s work and how much time she’s spent looking at it. She’s inconsistent with her messaging, saying that “she never looked into [Geometric Unity] in any detail” but clearly saying the opposite in an older video. It honestly doesn’t interest me to micro-police how Sabine chooses to express her opinions – her statements have all the flair of entertainment and so cannot be taken too literally. The problem is that Sabine appears to be employing ambiguity to present two incompatible positions: on the one hand, she wants to play honest critic on scientific matters (“Eric’s theory is a waste of time”), but she also wants to claim that Weinstein and his bandwagon deserve credit for being contrarian. It’s this latter step where she’s acting dishonestly, as I will now explain.

Rewinding to July of 2021, I reached out to Sabine, whom I had recently interviewed at Google, and I explained to her my frustration with the aforementioned Clubhouse episode (which she had watched). To my delight, she revealed she was speaking to Brian soon and would ask him about me. But when Sabine got back to me a few weeks later over Zoom, I was shocked by the message she brought. Sabine repeated and supported Brian’s claims that my co-author’s anonymity was the cause of Brian’s refusal to speak to me. She recounts that she has had to deal with anonymous trolls herself and that she doesn’t feel the need to respond to them. When I raised the fact that I wasn’t anonymous, she said that Brian deflected, noting that GU was Weinstein’s theory and that it wasn’t his prerogative to talk to me about it. When asked why he declined going on Brandon’s podcast to talk to me, his excuse was that it was insulting to be invited only to speak about Weinstein and not himself (contrary to what was offered to Brian and that Brian had in fact invited himself onto Brandon’s podcast). In summary, I got nowhere with Sabine talking to Brian on my behalf. 

At the time, I owed Sabine a tremendous debt of gratitude for hosting my blogpost in March 2021 that advertised my critique of GU. I had no public profile back then and her platform gave my work the reach and legitimacy it needed to get off the ground. Because of this, I kept Sabine’s confusing report about Brian to myself. I even met Sabine in person at the HowTheLightGetsIn Festival in London 2023 and found her very agreeable and sincere in person. Nevertheless, I always had the suspicion that Sabine might really have been shielding Brian by gaslighting me. That intuition was confirmed in Sabine’s recent video in which she claims that Brian “deserves credit for not chickening out and standing for Eric” and that Curt’s explainer video of GU was “courageous”. Such words are baffling given our private conversation and her being qualified to understand the validity of my critique of GU hosted on her own blog. I now clearly see the situation for what it is. Sabine is just as guilty of grifting as Brian and Curt.

This incident is particularly unfortunate in Sabine’s case, as she has cultivated a reputation as a respected physics communicator and science writer known for her sharp critiques of theoretical physics. Regardless of one’s stance with her contrarian views, she has in the past offered many perspectives on the state of theoretical physics worthy of attention, both on her blog and her book Lost in Math. Thus, her most recent video concerning Weinstein reflects poorly on her not only because of the personal circumstances I’ve now disclosed but also due to its strong departure from reason: in it, she also labels the theoretical physics community a “f-cking hypocrisy” and “scam” by equating the quality of their work with that of Weinstein’s Geometric Unity. This claim is so outrageous that physicist Christian Ferko shortly afterwards made a detailed presentation debunking this absurd false equivalence. It is a sad state of affairs to see Sabine undermine her own credibility by exploiting the sensationalism surrounding Weinstein and GU merely to incite outrage and air her grievances against academic and physics communities. And like Weinstein, she is willing to censor her critics rather than address them.⁵

The Jury is Already In

Scientific disagreements are intricate matters that require the attention of highly trained experts. However, for laypersons to be able to make up their own minds on such issues, they have to rely on proxies for credibility such as persuasiveness and conviction. This is the vulnerability that contrarians exploit, as they are often skilled in crafting the optics and rhetoric to support their case. Indeed, Weinstein and Hossenfelder’s strong personalities and their sowing of distrust in institutions enable them to persuade others of the correctness of their views when they deviate from those of experts. Thus, I include this section to show that even if one were to rely on social cues alone, there is in fact no controversy about the illegitimacy of Geometric Unity among those who are close to Weinstein or who are qualified to judge. The success of physics grifters has relied on the fact that they make more noise than those who have quietly moved on.

Lex Fridman

Let’s start with podcasting star Lex Fridman. Word got to Lex of my paper with Theo Polya when it was released and all three of us got onto a video call in March 2021 to discuss the situation. Lex proposed hosting us alongside Weinstein for a discussion of Geometric Unity on his podcast and we all agreed (Theo Polya was willing to reveal himself given his affinity for Lex’s podcast). The only question is whether Weinstein, who had already been on Lex’s show four times, would agree. 

Two weeks later, when I got in touch with Lex via email, he disappointingly changed topics and said he did not discuss what we had proposed with Weinstein (or Joe Rogan). In hindsight, this was clearly not the case. Weinstein released his Geometric Unity paper on April 1, debuting it on Joe Rogan’s podcast and then on Brian Keating’s podcast the following day. Conspicuously, Weinstein did not appear on Lex’s podcast. On Rogan’s podcast, Rogan’s skepticism and pushback was full-on with his interview with Weinstein, noting “there has been some criticism” and not letting Weinstein off the hook from his obscurantism. Rogan certainly hadn’t read Sabine’s blog to become aware of my critique; Lex had tipped him off. Four years later, Weinstein has not returned to Lex’s show.

Marcus du Sautoy

Marcus is the Oxford mathematician who hosted Weinstein’s GU talk and who knows Weinstein well from their overlapping time in academia. I first met Marcus virtually in 2022 when I hosted him for a talk at Google. During the Q&A of that conversation, I asked Marcus, who has been conspicuously absent from the Geometric Unity saga since 2013, about Weinstein and his work (it was a carefully thought-out question as Marcus was initially unwilling to field a question about Weinstein during our preparation). Marcus’s reply shows a man distancing himself from Geometric Unity, stating he’s less qualified than others to assess it, a sharp U-turn from his glowing comparison of Weinstein with Einstein in 2013. More recently, I also met Marcus in person at the 2025 East Anglia Festival. Over lunch with Marcus and his wife, Weinstein’s name briefly came up, but Marcus offered no positive comments about him or his ideas, and our conversation continued.

Economists, Computer Scientists, and Physicists

Despite advocating against established institutions and credentialism, Eric Weinstein readily leverages visits to prestigious institutions to enhance his public image. One notable instance was his November 2021 visit to UChicago, where he presented work co-authored with his wife, Pia Malaney, applying gauge theory to economics. Unlike his Geometric Unity work, which lacked sufficient detail to merit serious attention (consisting only of a YouTube lecture and an inadequately written paper), this UChicago presentation was accompanied by a well-formatted paper containing significant technical details. This allowed me to quickly analyze the paper, write a rebuttal (this time without an anonymous co-author), and upload it to arXiv.

Note that before this incident, the Malaney-Weinstein work received little attention due to its limited significance and impact. Despite this, Weinstein has suggested that it is worthy of a Nobel prize and claimed (with the support of Brian Keating) that it is “the most deep insight in mathematical economics of the last 25-50 years”. In that same podcast episode, Weinstein also makes the incendiary claim that Juan Maldacena stole such ideas from him and his wife. For those unable to judge the situation, I offer this appreciative reply from one of the economics professors at UChicago who sponsored Eric’s visit:

Has Weinstein responded to my economics rebuttal now that the anonymous Theo Polya is no longer an author? You already know the answer.

And in case you’re wondering, there’s also equivalent endorsement of my response to Geometric Unity. For instance, see my interview with computer scientist Scott Aaronson. There’s also Sean Carroll, who after his debate with Weinstein on Piers Morgan, confided to me that he directs everyone who asks him about Weinstein’s work to the rebuttal I published. Most recently, Christian Ferko has done an excellent job giving his own take on the flaws of GU based on the groundwork laid out by my analysis.

Overall, the consistent theme is that the few professional scientists who have examined Weinstein’s work and are not influenced by audience capture have supported the critique I put forth. The fact that most scientists have ignored GU says less about a failing within the scientific establishment and more about the group of contrarians who continue to entertain Weinstein’s ideas.

Conclusion: The Real Cost of the Grift

When I wrote my critique of Geometric Unity, I thought I was simply engaging in math and physics. I never imagined it would take me on a journey of hypocrisy and censorship. To dismiss this story as mere internet drama is to overlook the troubling reality underneath it all: Eric Weinstein and several of our most prominent science communicators – nay, science populists – are willing to distort the truth to suit their own interests. Many eyes and ears tune into Hossenfelder, Keating, and Jaimungal, who frequently appear alongside distinguished scientists that are likely unaware of their involvement in the grift. While these popularizers are able to fulfill their audience’s needs to understand science, they simultaneously enable them to hold unconventional views that may contradict the very science they promote. That the three of them have done valuable work in making science accessible to the public is precisely what makes their conduct disconcerting.

As a former fan of Weinstein who became a critic, I wrote my rebuttal to Geometric Unity expecting a scientific debate. Instead, I received a grim lesson about the state of modern science communication: when personal brands and tribal loyalties become the main focus, scientific integrity is sacrificed. The unfortunate truth is that some of the most visible voices in science are more interested in being celebrated than in being correct. And in a world where public trust in expertise is already in peril, that is a betrayal we simply cannot afford.

1. The rebuttal as well as the attention it received through various podcasts and discussions have been compiled together here. I would like to note that I found my way to Weinstein by initially being a fan of him and his podcast, until I realized, like many others have, that his rhetoric is mostly performative. My interview on Decoding the Gurus goes into this episode in detail. ↩︎
2. See here, here, and here. ↩︎
3. It should be noted that all evidence suggests that Weinstein does know who Theo Polya is. Under the Discord handle FieldTheorist, Theo Polya had several public Discord conversations with Weinstein in 2020. Weinstein also viewed Theo Polya’s LinkedIn profile sometime after the release of our paper. ↩︎
4. Curt created a three hour explainer video on Geometric Unity which completely ignores the problems with the work (in particular, my rebuttal). Curt’s followup interview with Weinstein immediately after his debate with Sean Carroll on the Piers Morgan Show also made no attempt to engage in the content of Geometric Unity.
   ↩︎
5. I ended up confronting Sabine about her video on X here and here, which I will admit was less than measured and could have been repackaged as a private email instead of a public callout. In my defence, I was speaking in a manner consistent with Sabine’s confrontational style and argumentativeness which she frequently displays on  X. In her own words, “I’ve always been more the kind of person who said, I think that’s bullshit. And then I just say that it’s bullshit.” Nevertheless, Sabine felt it proper to not only block me on X, but also delete my blogpost criticizing Weinstein (Wayback link). ↩︎

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Ieva Cepaite, Richard Easther, Daniel Gilbert, Chris Kavanaugh, and Tim Scarfe for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this post.