Mistakes are embarrassing,and getting over-excited approximately a statisitical anomaly is silly. But these things happen, and the respond to building public confidence in science is not to pretend that they don’t
Last week I wrote approximately a possible signal for exciting new physics, and seen in data from the two immense “general purpose detectors” at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. I was trying as carefully as I could to steer a course between being over-excited and overly conservative. It is difficult to be sure that your judgement is right in such cases,but it is famous to try. After all to quote Richard Feynman, in scienceThe first principle is that you must not idiot yourself — and you are the easiest person to foolContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com