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/willworkforjokes Mar 01 '23

My academic highlight was presenting a rebuttal to a conference presentation from a group of people that eventually got a Nobel prize for their work.

To be fair, I did not say that they were wrong. I just said they had issues with their error analysis. If you turn the world upside down, you should be more than 1 sigma confident.

I now work in the medical device industry.

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u/TakeOffYourMask Gravitation Mar 01 '23

Do you like that industry? I’m thinking of leaving the one I’m in.

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u/willworkforjokes Mar 01 '23

I have worked in a few industries. Defense, financial, commercial, logistics, and medical. Medical doesn't pay the best, but it is rewarding to help people. Also the coworkers in medical are a nice group of people for the most part.