We begin our tale with a "provocative" blog post from a US Naval atomic clock physicist, or rather, Sean M. Carroll's tweet about it. I'm not going to link to the original post directly, because I'm worried that would only encourage the original poster to continue with his big 'n' sweary barrage of Cox-focussed snarkisms -- and, quite literally, no-one wants that. But it's enough to say that the original post was in response to a point raised in Brian's Royal Institution of Great Britain lecture, which was broadcast on BBC2 before Christmas 2011, and a subsequent article in the Wall Street Journal. You can (and should) read about the actual physics in the blogposts themselves (after all, that's sort of the point of having the blogposts). Anyway, here's Sean's original tweet:

What's initially interesting is the language used and the response it provokes. To the casual reader, "goof" is pretty harmless, right? Well, simply put, no - it isn't. You see, for physicists, Plato's elemental theory of matter was a "goof". The "luminiferous aether" was a "goof". The Great LHC Breakdown of 2008 was a "goof". Finding out your GPS connector was faulty after announcing to the world that your neutrinos are travelling faster than light is a "goof". Basically, for physicists, there's no better way of saying "your theories, predictions and results have all the scientific value of a four day old vol-au-vent" than implying that one may, at some point in their career, have "goofed". Which, as the Americans would say, is "cute". This, perhaps, explains the response from BC:

I'm not entirely sure what the Urban Dictionary definition of "armchair physicist" is, but I'm guessing that it's intended to imply that the recipient isn't a real physicist. "Armchair physicists" do their physics from the safety and comfort of their home sat in their armchairs, probably in their pants and between episodes of "The Big Bang Theory". Real physicists, on the other hand, do their physics in their fully risk-assessed offices, perched precariously on whatever (un)ergonomic contraption Buildings and Facilities has provided them with, and almost certainly not in their pants. Understandably, Sean does not take this sitting down:

"Ah well". "Ah well". Sure, Sean, why don't you just rip up and burn eighteen copies of Brian and Jeff's book, "The Quantum Universe: Everything That Can Happen Does Happen", available from all good bookshops and www.amazon.com? "Ah well". Really. In my book, that's fighting talk. Cue a right-uppercut from the street-fighting Prof:

Take THAT! Now, I don't know who @thoeger is, but you need this tweet to make sense of some of the later ones.

Now, I do know who @jimalkhali is (he's a real physicist who wears boxer shorts, for the record), but his threads weren't that interesting. What matters is Brian's response here:

This is, of course, where the alarm bells of any media-inclined physicist should start ringing (the lecture notes, not the mispelling of "arguement"). If I had a pound for every email I've received that has asked me to read someone's "lecture notes" or "website" or "seven hundred-page book in PDF format" about their theory of physics that explains how everything works (while showing how Einstein was wrong, etc.), I'd have about £6. I'm sure Brian would have a lot more (well, even more) money, so it's surprising and interesting to find him using the language of the "nutjob" in conversation with Sean. What follows is the well-honed response of a media-inclined physicist:

Cute, Sean. Cute.

Sent via the "World Wide Web", yeah? You know, what CERN invented all those years ago? Tim Berners-Lee? Anyway, there's no response from Sean - I wonder why?

TOO RIGHT, BRIAN. Anyway, I've been fairly tongue-in-cheek thus far, but herein lies a semi-serious point: should who "sent the tweet" matter? Would Brian have responded differently if he had known "who [had] sent the tweet"? (Incidentally, Brian maybe should have known who Sean was - in a nice hat-tip to the "everything is connected to everything else" vein, Sean and Brian are tenuously connected. Sean's wife, Jennifer Ouellette @JenLucPiquant worked with TV biologist and "friend of Brian" Adam Rutherford on the Radio 4 programme "Scientists Go To Hollywood", IIRC.)

Had to get the "goofs" in there, didn't you Sean! Anyway, this is what I (seriously) think is the best thing about this discussion: the follow-up blogposts. Firstly, from Sean himself:

You should read it yourselves, but what's important to note is that Sean has 1) actually read the lecture notes; 2) responded to them, and 3) taken the time out of his undoubtly hectic schedule to thoroughly explain his position. Which, of course, Brian, doesn't agree with:

Point of interest: "discuss off-line" is one of my favourite phrases, as it usually indicates the point in the meeting when the chair has noticed everyone else in the room has lost interest/gone to sleep/started playing "Angry Birds" (it's also a regular winner in "Meetings Bingo"). However, I think it means that they're going to send each other emails, which while still technically "on-line", isn't Storify-able.