An article in this week's Science News quotes Andrew Strominger -- "I've felt for a long time that the general public's impression of what string theory had accomplished and how much of it was correct was too positive" -- and suggests that a souring of this inflated enthusiasm is contributing to the current backlash. In that light, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the coverage in the New York Times and see if it follows the classic boom-and-bust cycle we talked about at an earlier session. Here are some milestones:

1. First mention of the word "superstrings" in the New York Times:
   Walter Sullivan, "Is Absolutely Everything Made of Strings?" May 7, 1985
2. New York Times Magazine discovers Ed Witten:
   K.C. Cole, "A Theory of Everything," October 18, 1987
3. First mention of the word "branes" in the New York Times:
   George Johnson, "Almost in Awe, Physicists Ponder 'Ultimate' Theory," September 22, 1998 (with a sidebar, "New Dimension in Dance: Thinking Man's Macarena")
4. Early signs of a backlash:
   Dennis Overbye, "String Theory, at 20, Explains It All (or Not)," December 7, 2004