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As a physicist, I am still skeptical. And it's not just NewScientist, AAAS's (supposedly reputable) online magazine broke the same story a day earlier [1]. The

As a physicist, I am still skeptical. And it's not just NewScientist, AAAS's (supposedly reputable) online magazine broke the same story a day earlier [1]. There is literally no news content in this story. The story is "some guy says they did it wrong, BICEP says they did it right". It is not news that they used preliminary conference slides to subtract foregrounds, they have been open about that from the get-go. People are axious about the result, as it certainly will change when Planck drops their full dataset in October. It's likely that their measured value of r=0.20 will be lowered (although actually that can be cosmologically preferable). But I don't much expect that the difference will be large enough to invalidate their r=0 exclusion, which is the really ground-breaking result. And by the way, scientists are human; they make mistakes. If that happens, then you can expect BICEP2 to retract their results. But until the _BICEP2_ team (not some guy who wan't involved with the analysis) makes a statement that they did something wrong, there's simply no news here. [1] http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2014/05/blockbuster-big-bang-result-may-fizzle-rumor-suggests http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2014/05/blockbuster-big-b...

Luc 12y ago
Sure, but it's mainly physicists I've heard gossip about it. As you say, scientists are human, and gossiping is fun...
mturmon 12y ago
Good points. It was news to me, though, to read that there is an asterisk of uncertainty about the BICEP2 result, because the original flurry of press lost that asterisk. ("5 sigma"!). I happened to be talking with someone from the Planck team yesterday, and they mentioned the seriousness of these reservations. He was not pre-judging one way or the other, just saying it's not obvious at present how it's going to shake out.

Luc 12y ago

Sure, but it's mainly physicists I've heard gossip about it. As you say, scientists are human, and gossiping is fun...

mturmon 12y ago

Good points. It was news to me, though, to read that there is an asterisk of uncertainty about the BICEP2 result, because the original flurry of press lost that asterisk. ("5 sigma"!). I happened to be talking with someone from the Planck team yesterday, and they mentioned the seriousness of these reservations. He was not pre-judging one way or the other, just saying it's not obvious at present how it's going to shake out.