A confusing view on Feynman

I agree with almost all of this, except for one or two key points. The bits about Ockham's Razor and beauty and simplicity not being a guide to truth are spot on. But about Feynman, for all his faults as a human being (which were pretty serious) :

Feynman was unquestionably one of the outstanding physicists of the 20th century... In the area of philosophy of science, though, like many physicists of his and the subsequent generation (and unlike those belonging to the previous one, including Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr), Feynman didn’t really shine – to put it mildly.

That's not the Feynman I recognise, who had a great many superbly eloquent quotes about the philosophy of science. Whether Feynman really said that you can "recognise truth by its beauty and simplicity", which the author admits is from a single source, I find it unlikely that that's how he actually went about doing science. "If it disagrees with experiment it's wrong", which is a 100% certain Feynman quote, blows that sentiment out of the water anyway. So it seems unfair to target Feynman for an attack of beauty.

The moral of the story is that physicists should leave philosophy of science to the pros, and stick to what they know best. Better yet: this is an area where fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue is not just a possibility, but arguably a necessity. 

I cannot for the life of me see how it's possible to study philosophy of science (at a professional level) without actually doing any honest-to-goodness research. I wouldn't trust the view of such a self-proclaimed philosopher unless they could show me their papers and talk me through their failed explorations, their months of work that compressed to a sentence of two, the hideously confused views of the referees they had to deal with, and their struggles to persuade everyone else that they were doing something interesting. That's one area of philosophy where I think it's vital to get down and dirty with some actual damn data.

Ironically, it was Plato – a philosopher – who argued that beauty is a guide to truth (and goodness), apparently never having met an untruthful member of the opposite (or same, as the case might be) sex. 

Da fuq ? I dunno which version of Plato this guy was reading, but I suggest he burn the copy and scatter the ashes to the four winds, because that sentence makes no sense.

It is therefore a good idea for scientists and philosophers alike to check with each other before uttering notions that might be hard to defend, especially when it comes to figures who are influential with the public. To quote another philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, in a different context: ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’

Okay, but how does that work in practise ? When should I call the philosophy department ? When should they call me ? How would either of us know when to do this, given that we may not know our own ignorance ? Nay, a philosopher of science should be a scientist first and a philosopher second, otherwise he won't know what he's on about. Philosophy is implicit in what the scientist does, but science is not implicit in philosophy.

Richard Feynman was wrong about beauty and truth in science - Massimo Pigliucci | Aeon Ideas

The American physicist Richard Feynman is often quoted as saying: 'You can recognise truth by its beauty and simplicity.' The phrase appears in the work of the American science writer K C Cole - in her Sympathetic Vibrations: Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life (1985) - although I could not find other records of Feynman writing or saying it.