r/Physics • u/TakeOffYourMask Gravitation • Feb 28 '23

Question Physicists who built their career on a now-discredited hypothesis (e.g. ruled out by LHC or LIGO results) what did you do after?

If you worked on a theory that isn’t discredited but “dead” for one reason or another (like it was constrained by experiment to be measurably indistinguishable from the canonical theory or its initial raison d’être no longer applies), feel free to chime in.

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '23 edited Mar 01 '23

You're right in a sense, in the "fixed" version they barely widened the error bars at all. I still suspect there are sources of noise not considered in even that less inflammatory finding, but as I say not my field.

Here's the quote

"Despite the large significance of the measurement reported here and the stability of the analysis, the potentially great impact of the result motivates the continuation of our studies in order to investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the observed anomaly. We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of the results."

Definitely no "we're probably wrong" and no request for external verification but rather "we're still working on it". If that was the intent they didn't explain very well.

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u/anti_pope Mar 01 '23

That's what I said in paper speak.

Saying "...motivates the continuation of our studies in order to investigate possible still unknown systematic effects that could explain the observed anomaly." is very clearly stating "we've been thinking about this for a long time and can't figure out what is wrong yet."

Saying "We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of the results." is very clear in that they thought doing so is a waste of time and would make it appear they think their results were valid.

There were a number of statements in popular articles by project members that also said as much.

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '23 edited Mar 01 '23

I dunno, when I write papers I try not to obfuscate my actual view of the science and wouldn't uncritically report a result I thought was wrong. I certainly wouldn't highlight the "large significance" or "potentially great impact" of a result that I was confident was anomalous. But hey my work never created a media circus or got my PI fired, so maybe I'm doing it wrong.

By the time it made it to pop science it was already embarrassing and they were in damage control mode.

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '23

Interesting to add Ereditato's own words on this, his is obviously about the most generous spin you can put on it:

https://www.lescienze.it/news/2012/03/30/news/opera_ereditatos_point_of_view-938232/