Physicists have been working for decades on a "theory of everything," one that unites quantum mechanics and relativity. Apparently, they were being too modest. Yesterday saw publication of a press release claiming a biologist had just published a theory accounting for all of that—and handling the origin of life and the creation of the Moon in the bargain. Better yet, no math!

Where did such a crazy theory originate? In the mind of a biologist at a respected research institution, Case Western Reserve University Medical School. Amazingly, he managed to get his ideas published, then amplified by an official press release. At least two sites with poor editorial control then reposted the press release—verbatim—as a news story.

Gyres all the way down

The theory in question springs from the brain of one Erik Andrulis, a CWRU faculty member who has a number of earlier papers on fairly standard biochemistry. The new paper was accepted by an open access journal called Life, meaning that you can freely download a copy of its 105 pages if you're so inclined. Apparently, the journal is peer-reviewed, which is a bit of a surprise; even accepting that the paper makes a purely theoretical proposal, it is nothing like science as I've ever seen it practiced.

The basic idea is that everything, from subatomic particles to living systems, is based on helical systems the author calls "gyres," which transform matter, energy, and information. These transformations then determine the properties of various natural systems, living and otherwise. What are these gyres? It's really hard to say; even Andrulis admits that they're just "a straightforward and non-mathematical core model" (although he seems to think that's a good thing). Just about everything can be derived from this core model; the author cites "major phenomena including, but not limited to, quantum gravity, phase transitions of water, why living systems are predominantly CHNOPS (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur), homochirality of sugars and amino acids, homeoviscous adaptation, triplet code, and DNA mutations."

He's serious about the "not limited to" part; one of the sections describes how gyres could cause the Moon to form.

Is this a viable theory of everything? The word "boson," the particle that carries forces, isn't in the text at all. "Quark" appears once—in the title of one of the 800 references. The only subatomic particle Andrulis describes is the electron; he skips from there straight up to oxygen. Enormous gaps exist everywhere one looks.

The theory is supposed to be testable, but the word "test" only shows up in the text twice. In both cases, Andrulis simply claims his theory is testable in specific areas of study. He does not indicate what those tests might be, nor what results would be predicted based on his gyres.

I could easily go into more specifics (very easily—I've got lots of notes), but it's clear that there's nothing in the paper that much resembles science. (Though there's always the chance that I'm just not smart enough to see the model's brilliance.)

Responsibility

How in the world did this get into a peer-reviewed journal? It's not clear. Life is tiny, publishing a single issue with a handful of papers in each of its two years of existence. Many of these papers seem highly speculative, so this paper isn't completely out of line. But it should be clear to just about anyone that there's no clear relationship between this proposed model and reality, something that is fundamental to science. It's hard to imagine why Life's reviewers decided it should pass peer review.

Peer review isn't meant as a way to censor unpopular or radically new ideas. It is meant to ensure that publications meet minimal scientific standards (how minimal will depend on the journal), and it imparts a level of credibility to anything that passes review. As far as I can determine, this paper doesn't meet even minimal scientific standards. By giving it the credibility of having been peer-reviewed anyway, the reviewers arguably failed in their duty.

The paper would almost certainly have languished in obscurity were it not for the fact that the press office at the Case Western chose to publicize it with a press release that repeated many of the paper's most outlandish claims.

A paper like this can put a university's Press Information Officer (PIO) in a tough position. According to a PIO at a major university (who asked to speak without attribution because he works in the field), a PIO can typically recognize when something is off on the fringes of science, and they don't want to promote a story that will damage their institution's credibility.

"We do try to avoid doing stories that we feel could backfire on the institution, but it's not always up to the PIO to say no to a paper that is appearing in a peer-reviewed journal," the PIO told Ars. "Note that she [the Case Western PIO] made the point about peer-review explicitly in the release—that’s a pretty telling detail."

PIOs are put in these awkward situations all the time. Despite the fact that we've discovered numerous fossils of feathered dinosaurs, some researchers still discount the connections between the two. Every few years, one of them gets a new publication, which is almost invariably followed by a press release. That said, support by a press office isn't uniform; Berkeley's biology news aggregator doesn't seem to have anything from Peter Duesberg, a biologist on the faculty there who has views that are quite controversial.

(We contacted Case Western's press office but, as of press time, had not received a reply.)

If the responsibility of press officers can be a bit complicated, the responsibility of news sites isn't. PhysOrg and Science Daily both did what they always do and ran the press release, unedited, as if it were their own original news content. ScienceDaily even added itself as the dateline source.

This wouldn't necessarily be a problem if it weren't for the fact that, in a large number of contexts, these two sites are treated as credible sources of scientific information. Items posted there make frequent appearances on social news sites, and a number of people I've talked to have been shocked to discover that the majority of the sites' content is nothing more than rebranded press releases.

Ultimately, the job of editing and of peer review is to help ensure that only scientifically valid data and ideas end up in the literature. The job of the press should be to ensure that the public only receives reports of equal quality (or better, since the press can act as an additional layer of filtering). Unfortunately, with the rise of the press release, and of aggregators that disguise press releases as news content, the public is not being well served in this regard.

Update: Over the weekend, Case Western Reserve removed the press release from its site, although it remains up at the science PR aggregator Eurekalert. In response, ScienceDaily has also removed its version of the press release (the link above now redirects to the site's front page). The reposted press release is still hosted by PhysOrg.