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There are several things to keep in mind when reading things like this piece: 1) Nobody with any actual knowledge about the analysis spoke with anyone who then
by mattheww 15y ago
There are several things to keep in mind when reading things like this piece:
1) Nobody with any actual knowledge about the analysis spoke with anyone who then blogged about it. These people know better. What actually happened was that people in CMS and ATLAS, who don't work on the Higgs analysis, saw the Higgs plots during internal discussions and then told their theorist, blogger friends roughly what they saw.
2) The most familiar exclusion plots are showing the line at which the cross section is excluded at 95% along with the 2-sigma uncertainty on the expected location of this curve. Since the people spreading rumors are not very familiar with the analysis, they do not realize that n-sigma deviations between the observed and expected lines are not the same thing as n-sigma observations. The actual significance of observation will usually be lower.
3) Again because the people spreading rumors are not familiar with the analysis, they are not able to add appropriate caveats about systematic uncertainties, which can substantially reduce significance. Because these rumors started last week, I guarantee the plots on which they were based do not include all systematic effects. And because the bloggers are predominantly theorists, they don't have the experience to add that information themselves either.
So I hope you will take rumors for what they are: rumors.
- demallien 15y ago1) Nobody with any actual knowledge about the analysis spoke with anyone who then blogged about it. These people know better. What actually happened was that people in CMS and ATLAS, who don't work on the Higgs analysis, saw the Higgs plots during internal discussions and then told their theorist, blogger friends roughly what they saw. Are you saying that you do have actual knowledge, or are you just guessing this stuff just like the others? I'm not trtying to be snarky, I really want to know if you have good hard info or not.
- mattheww 15y agoLet's just say that regardless of whether I have any actual knowledge about this specific situation, I know that what I outlined is what happens from other, similar situations where I definitely have actual knowledge. Let's also say that if I did have any actual knowledge, I would know better than to confirm it and I would definitely know better than to say what I know to a blogger. I do know that knowledgeable people will probably be more open-mouthed around this time tomorrow.
- juiceandjuice 15y agoAhh the good ole' pre-publication information embargo :) You're right though... somebody (i.e. one of the thousands of collaborators, from undergrads to PIs) probably got the email that said something to the effect "we'll be releasing results on the search for the Higgs tomorrow, and until those results are released you aren't allowed to talk/tweet/email/post/facebook any information about the experiment. Of course, this doesn't mean they know anything about the paper, only that they know there's going to be a paper that discusses something. The people who really know are going to be the ones with the tightest lips.