ar X iv : h ep - p h / 04 02 14 8 v 1 1 3 Fe b 20 04 Lattice Field

This letter is in response to a recent review by DeTar and Gottlieb about lattice QCD that has recently appeared in Physics Today. It also is partially motivated by a separate review written by DeGrand. My basic point is that one should be more responsible when presenting numerical results as coming from ab initio calculations. In turn, this leads me to the suggestion that in lattice field theory one should go back to computational support going directly to small groups, including groups containing only a single researcher, rather than concentrating most of the funds into the hands of few large collaborations. DeTar and Gottlieb's article [1] misleads readers from outside lattice field theory about its past, present and future. At best, it may present a consensus in the collaboration the authors are part of, known as MILC. The terms " lattice field theory (LFT) " , " lattice gauge theory (LGT) " and " lattice QCD (LQCD) " are often used interchangeably. I shall follow this practice ; the more accurate term will be clear from the context. Also, I have not put in references to any papers except the ones I quote from verbatim. After an overview of the history of LFT the authors of [1] state that " the most important theoretical advance in recent years " was that of " improvement ". I disagree with this qualification. In their historical overview the authors miss too many of the field's truly remarkable achievements. The description below briefly mentions some of these achievements and is intended to show that " improvement " does not measure up. The renormalization group (RG), a conceptual organizing principle of all field theories, has been first concretely formulated in LFT. Nowadays we have beautiful examples of intricate flow patterns between different fixed points of continuum field theories showing that these concepts actually work to full extent. As a concrete example of the value of numerical LFT let me mention one non-gauge result of relevance to particle physics: triviality is indeed a property of scalar field theories and implies a non-perturbative bound on the Higgs mass of the order of 700 GeV. Another conceptual idea which started its life in LFT is the concept of duality. Two dual field theories typically have different fields, different symmetries, but, if the coupling in one theory is set to the inverse 1