Being a reporter requires a certain cynicism about press releases. After all, whether something is newsworthy can often be determined by gaining the attention of a media outlet. So press officers (who are usually not scientists, and even if they are, they can't be experts in every area of science—no one can be) are under a lot of pressure to hype scientific results, whether they're significant, marginal, or incremental.

That's not inherently a bad thing: small amounts of progress can still be very interesting. And it's how science actually works: big, groundbreaking, paradigm-shifting results are very rare, and usually can only be recognized retrospectively thanks to the smaller, more incremental work of daily research.

However, even my Cary-Grant-in-His-Girl-Friday cynicism was challenged today. I received a press release from the University of Melbourne titled "Big Bang theory challenged by big chill" and it was even more breathless than usual. In fact, the tone of the release felt more like a work of a crackpot than legitimate research: full of grandiose claims about overthrowing well-established science and implicit comparison of the lead researcher to Einstein and ancient Greek philosophers. Even the name of the theory, "quantum graphity," sounded suspiciously like something a crackpot would come up with.

However, the paper itself was published in a legitimate peer-reviewed journal, Physical Review D, which receives a lot of submissions and can afford to be very choosy. So, there was a large disconnect between the wording of the press release and what I would expect from the conservative academic scientific publishing industry. Some of my colleagues on Twitter even questioned whether the whole thing was an elaborate leg-pull, though the balance of evidence was against it. Since my background is in cosmology, I decided to read the paper itself.

What the paper actually says...

The title of the paper is neutral and to the point: "Domain structures in quantum graphity." Nowhere in the paper do the four authors mention overthrowing the Big Bang model; the paper's purpose and methodology are clear. Quantum graphity is a theory motivated by condensed matter physics (the science of materials at high densities), in which the structure of space-time emerges from a lattice-like structure in the very early Universe.

Quantum graphity postulates that certain properties—the number of dimensions of the physical Universe, the finite speed of light, even the continuity of space-time—are emergent, just as electron mass emerges from its interactions with the Higgs field in particle physics. The name "graphity" (a deliberate pun, however terrible, on "gravity") is derived from graph theory, the branch of mathematics dealing with discrete connections between points. In physics, graph theory shows up in several areas as a way to describe interactions of atoms within crystals, among other things (it's also used to model computer networks).

A lot of the ideas in quantum graphity aren't new. A number of theories have been proposed over the years to explain why there are four dimensions (three space, one time) instead of some other number, and others have postulated a fundamental quantum of length, giving space-time a lattice structure. I say this not to dismiss quantum graphity, but to point out that it's less radical than the press release might lead one to believe.

In fact, the whole "crackpot" suspicion disappears in the last sections of the paper: the authors rightly focused on testable consequences of the theory. If the quantum graphity concept is legitimate, then there will be effects on the propagation of light in the early Universe, which may be detectable. Particularly, the bending of light from gravity as predicted by general relativity is slightly different from the effect in quantum graphity. While they perform no particular calculations showing specifically what the consequences of graphity should be in astronomical observations, there should be testable predictions. I await the follow-up papers with interest. The theory will stand or fall on the evidence, after all.

...versus the press coverage

However, you wouldn't know much of that from the press release or the coverage that followed. Something went wrong with the quantum graphity paper, and it's a matter of some concern to all of us that it did.

One issue is a recurring problem: reporters simply repeat the claims in press releases in their articles. That's understandable under most conditions. After all, as with press officers, reporters aren't usually experts in the area of science they're covering, and so wouldn't be able to fully understand the scientific paper. Again, I don't think reporters need to be able to read every scientific paper to be good at their jobs.

But it quickly became clear that other issues were at play. A Syndey (Australia) paper reported the story in the same breathless fashion, apparently taking the press release at its word. However, a careful reading revealed something new: the university press office wasn't ultimately the source of the hype. The lead author of the paper was part of the problem.

In the interview included with the story, author James Q. Quach states things even more strongly than the press release did: the Big Bang model is going to be overthrown by quantum graphity, and cosmology will be rewritten.

Part of the problem is with what he means by the Big Bang, compared with what the term means to most cosmologists. The Big Bang model is a general framework for the expansion of the Universe, the formation of the first atoms, and the evolution of structures that ensued. That general framework is not going to be simply overthrown by any new ideas: it's too well-tested for that, and anything new will have to incorporate elements of the Big Bang in order to make sense of those results.

The very early Universe—the very first fractions of a second after the Big Bang—is indeed still not understood, since we have no established quantum theory of gravity that would describe the moments right after the very beginning. Quantum graphity could be a potential candidate. But, based on this paper, it is far too early to say whether it's viable or not, much less whether it will challenge any widely accepted models such as inflation.

The huge disconnect between what the paper actually says and what the author is promoting in the non-technical press is disturbing. Anyone who didn't read the paper might think it supports what Quach is saying in interviews, and what the university press office passed along unreservedly. Effectively, the author attempted to bypass the peer review process any legitimate scientific paper must go through and appealed straight to the public, presenting claims that probably would not pass muster with experts in the field.

The university press office and many reporters, lacking the know-how to read the original paper, didn't catch this discrepancy. But if they can't understand the science, then they probably shouldn't uncritically pass the author's claims along. Perhaps it's time to be a little more cynical all around, at least when faced with extremely grandiose propositions about overthrowing well-established science.

Physical Review D, 2012. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.86.044001 (About DOIs). The paper is also available for free download at the ArXiV.