The article can be read as "there is a 999/1000 chance that this is not a coincidence". This is strictly speaking correct, because it doesn't specify what the c

The article can be read as "there is a 999/1000 chance that this is not a coincidence". This is strictly speaking correct, because it doesn't specify what the coincidence would be. The correct interpretation is "there is a 999/1000 chance that you wouldn't see this data if the particle didn't exist" / "there is a 1/1000 chance that you would see this data if the particle didn't exist". The wrong interpretation that still agrees with the statement is "there is a 999/1000 chance that the particle exists given that we have seen this data" / "there is a 1/1000 chance that the particle doesn't exist given that we have seen this data". P(data | no particle) = P (no particle | data) * P (data) / P (no particle). As a layman, I have no idea what P(data) is, and I think no one can give a convincing estimate for P(no particle). Since P(data | no particle) and P(no particle | data) are in fact proportional, the only thing I should really care about as a layman is the value of any one of them. I any way can't evaluate myself what would be a convincing probability, since I don't have any proper priors.