An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything - UPDATE

Following up on this story from last week, Chris Lee at Ars Technica has read A. Garrett Lisi's paper, and he's not buying.

According to Lee, Lisi has a problem with units at the very beginning of the paper; it seems possible that this unit problem may prevent the proper prediction of Lisi's expected particles. Even if the unit problem is solvable, the calculations required to determine the characteristics of the expected particles will be "extraordinarily difficult."

And Lee's not the only one. A post on AT's forum cites the virtues of the Standard Model, and explains the dangers of attempting to go beyond it.

These commenters also mention a few other things, including their displeasure with the way this paper was released to the general public rather than kept within the scientific community, and discomfort with the language chosen by Lisi in describing his conclusions. Further peer review is certainly coming, but at the moment, the outlook is not bright.