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Scientist Who Oversaw OPERA's Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Study Resigns
New submitter Big Hairy Ian writes with this news from the BBC:
"The head of an experiment that appeared to show subatomic particles traveling faster than the speed of light has resigned from his post. Prof Antonio Ereditato oversaw results that appeared to challenge Einstein's theory that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. Reports said some members of his group, called OPERA, had wanted him to resign. Earlier in March, a repeat experiment found that the particles, known as neutrinos, did not exceed light speed."
Part of scientific endeavor is getting it wrong, and testing again to make sure. It seems like the mistakes that happened were minor, technical, and easy to miss. It would be a very different manner if the problems had been from operational carelessness or intentional fabrication, but I can't actually see any wrongdoing here.
First Post!
All OPERA did was saying, "Hey, we saw a result that made no sense. This is what we did. Can anyone verify that we did something wrong?" And so his peers want him ousted for doing science as it is intended?
When you are going to dispute the entire basis of the laws of Physics, you need to make sure you're correct if you are going to go public over it.
They had an unusual result, ended up having to publish something after a leak, then found the error and published that as well. This is science as it should be done. Asking for this man's resignation is idiotic.
Wasn't this experiment about something else completely and this was just something that was observed and then a request for other to help find out possibly why they got this result.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Nice to see Einstein is still making an impact on lives 60 years later.
The release of the preliminary Opera results last September was made after the news had leaked from the experiment to a few scientists not belonging to the collaboration.
First sentence of the last paragraph. This means they tried to keep it a secret as long as possible.
Why did he resign? Everything I heard showed he was handling the situation well. He got some unlikely results, published them with plenty of "there's probably something else going on here, don't get too exited" disclaimers, and then it turned out that some of the equipment was faulty in an unexpected way.
Nothing there seems too incompetent. Why did his group want him gone?
So now whoever figures out warp drive will know to keep their stupid mouth shut!
Seems wrong to me. You shouldn't fire a scientist because they got something wrong. As long as he followed the procedure and acted in good faith I think the community should let him be. From what I can see he practiced due diligence. A quote from the guy:
We wanted to find a mistake - trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects - and we didn't. When you don't find anything, then you say 'well, now I'm forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinize this.'
Seems to me like he wasn't doing anything wrong, or make outrageous claims. They did an experiment and got questionable results. They tried to find the reason for the strange results and couldn't. So they asked for peer review. Peer reviewers found the mistake. Progress marches on.
This would have been an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the difference between science and religion. A falsifiable hypothesis thrown out. Instead we have someone "sacked for heresy", giving totally the wrong message.
Is this slashdot?
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
Lets see:
They got unexpected result.
They tested many time and continued to get the same result
They went public and said this is are results, but would would like other people to verify them, cause the result seem unlikely.
People looked into the test, found some issue, but they wouldn't account for the 60 ns
then some more test where run, the result where as expected(not FTL)
Sounds lie proper science to me. Why was he forced to step down? Are we now saying that only scientist whose experiments are successful can do experiments?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can't actually see any wrongdoing here
I'm disappointed by this.
It's not like he intentionally lied or deceived. I followed the issue from beginning to end and it was carried out exactly the way we all expect an anomaly to be investigated, with caution and soliciting help from peers.
If anything, I would trust this professor even more based on his handling of the situation. /scratches head, sighs.../
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I wish politicians would step down in light of evidence. Not like the Santorum henchmen...
if he'd shelled out the bucks for Monster Cables!
That will be my stock answer whenever a customer tells me they need something "yesterday".
That seems a shame to me. I'm a science educator and one of the things students love science for is that it's OK to get it wrong. You're allowed to do all the planning, setting up, measurements, analysis and evaluation and get the wrong answer, provided that you're honest about what you did and leave a record such that other can repeat what you did to see if they get the same thing. The faster-than-light news story was fantastic for me to underline the strength of science for my students, not least because of the very careful things that were being said by the scientists (compared to the media hyperbole). I hope Prof. Ereditato hasn't been made to regret the very great open service he did for contemporary science.
Nick Hood
What if Einstein resigned from his post just because he challenged Newton's laws? What if Ereditato is actually right, but this specific experiment was wrong? There are too many old jaded stubborn researchers without an open mind, which are holding back progress in every field. There is nothing wrong with questioning something and being proven wrong.
A few weeks ago I was moderated -1 flaimbait on Slashdot because I dared say that the scientists were irresponsible in going to press with this news. Everyone thought I was being a jerk because wow, isn't this a great demonstration of the way the scientific process is going to work and didn't we all learn about science in this fiasco.
Guess what, yes, maybe for non-scientists this is "how the scientific method works," but internally, among scientists, we are supposed to do many levels vetting before we go public like this with a result. The press loves any news story that claims Einstein was wrong, and so it's easy to get caught in the publicity and make a big deal of something that should be scrutinized thoroughly before being exposed.
This was not "the scientific method at work." The scientific method at work is that when you find something that contradicts a successful 100-year-old theory, you sit down a few years and think about it before going public with it. Otherwise it costs you your fucking reputation as a scientists, which can end your career.
I think we can all agree at this point that the "FTL Neutrino" claim was wrong - but scientists need the freedom to be wrong once in a while, even in a big way. Without it, they might be afraid to make the kind of leaps of insight that one needs to keep science advancing. It follows that this person shouldn't have lost their job just for being wrong. Now, if there's clear evidence that he was stealing money, that's something else.
Finding God in a Dog
I know we're all in the great big hurry to use the version of the "scientific method" we learned in the 3rd grade (supplemented by what we've gleaned since then from reading popular science articles and watching TED talks) to dissect whether this guy should or should not have quit. But has it occurred to any of you that maybe he was a bad manager who didn't realize it until he and his team were placed under a lot of stress? Or maybe he is tired of being in charge and wants to go back to his university full time to lead a more normal academic life? Or maybe there's something else internally that happened that we don't know about because it's none of our business?
I know this might be hard to accept, but scientists are not robots who behave in strict accordance with The Scientific Method in every aspect of their lives (however one would actually do that). They are human beings who make life decisions for a wide variety of reasons, just like everyone else.
Yeah, Opera is fast - especially compared to that bloated pig Firefox. But come on. Not even an Opera fanboi is going to claim it is faster than light.
I don't think it's too late for us to all say, openly and without any self-recriminations, that it would have been massively, epically cool had they actually and verifiably found a FTL particle. I'll admit it - it surely would have been cool.
The problem with their experimental approach is that they did not attempt to break the warp barrier by using a hollowed-out nuclear missile as the basis for a ship. Because we can totally break the warp barrier with a manned spaceflight *before* we can do it with tiny particles, right?
The original paper had over a hundred co-authors listed, and I have only heard of 5 people in the entire project that asked to not have their name listed. If the director should resign over this, then why shouldn't the 100+ other people who were confident enough to put their name on the paper?
This is stupid. They did nothing wrong, there is no reason for anyone to resign.
The problem becomes that new people sometimes repeat those errors without having known they had happened before. I have seen this in my field. Publishing error does not get you tenure.
Therefore the Opera group should be lauded for publishing theirs. They tried pretty hard to eliminate error.
I thought witch hunts were reserved to the church.. Poor chap.
I read a story on Slashdot that this was caused because of a loose wire. Maybe he loosened the wire himself? I know I would......phyc....
Unexpected Result or Fundamental Mistake? Surely if I made a colossal error i'd try to say its just an 'unexpected result'...
That is my guess. Scientifically they behaved fine, but the PR in the mainstream press might have been a bit uncomfortable.
The members of the mainstream press who blew things out of proportion and dumbed down the story so much and failed to emphasize that the real scientists were saying "we must have made a mistake" should resign.
:-)
The real scientist who sees something odd and shows it to colleagues to help him/her figure out what went wrong should not be punished when it turns out to be due to some basic mistake. Something like "I have odd data but I can't figure out what I did wrong" was the start of many scientific discoveries.
Creating an environment where scientists are reluctant to share odd results and get help finding mistakes will impede the progress of science.
However creating an environment where sensationalist journalists, or scientifically illiterate journalists who write articles regarding advanced scientific topics, are reluctant to publish their writing might be a good thing. Of course I might have made a mistake in my logic and I hope my slashdot colleagues can help me see my error.
My understanding is that the recent experiment showed Neutrinos traveling at the exact same speed as light. That may not be faster, but wouldn't that still require an infinite amount of energy according to current models and therefore not be possible?
Perhaps what we believe to be the maximum constant really is the speed of light, but there is an unknown force of quality of the universe that can change and effect that constant. E=MC2 is the formula for perfect conditions that we know don't really exist in nature, the actually formulas for converting a specific piece of mass into energy also take into account things like velocity; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence
Is there a factor that we're missing? Something that is one value 99% of the time and only under certain conditions changes?
One would think that a world class smart guy would come up with a better excuse for taking Spring Break.
It's a shame that Einstein would disapprove of. He was fond of bucking the establishment and encouraged future scientists to challenge his work. Science should never be afraid of going against what is established, known and popularly accepted as dogma.
I think the Opera study results were wrong. Similar reports were seen in the mine in Soudan in Minnesota and they felt that the margin of error was wide enough to that they could not substantiate their results. The opera study didn't make this same decision and they should have. That being said the followed process, didn't hype it and did things the right way. There was no attempt at fraud or deceit and there is nothing to apologize for.
All this resignation will do is discourage others from challenging what is accepted dogma. That is the scientific shame, not the fact that the scientists at Opera got things wrong.
Let us not bring science to the level of politics! Now we have two failures, one of which is a failure of science, which is welcomed, and the other of perspective, which indeed is something to be ashamed of. Science welcomes failure. If something is falsified, then we are only that much closer to the actual truth of things. Let's start a petition to have this man reinstated in spite of himself!
Earlier this month, a test run by a different group at the same Italian laboratory recorded neutrinos travelling at precisely light speed.
The people who made this observation and are saying there's no big deal about it should be fired!
Did neutrinos suddenly lose their mass somewhere? An object with mass traveling at the speed of light should be an impossibility! That's what it means to divide by 0! Going AT the speed of light is no less a violation of special relativity than going FASTER!
Did a double take there...
Yeah, I like Opera browser, and I know it has some rabid fans, but claiming it's faster than light speed...
Neutrinos having mass AND traveling at the speed of light means there is something seriously wrong with relativity or quantum theory. There's every reason to think at this point that there is a result in the offing, and there's no point making scientists tiptoe around while they try to find the hole.
On the other hand, here you have a real scientist saying "I got it wrong, I am stepping down." If this were a climate "scientist" they would say "ehh."
Two things are noteworthy with this unedifying example of scientifc whoop-de-do:
1. The long list of physicists who felt the need to sign the original paper which made the unlikely assertion that Realtivity was wrong. (Since when do physicists hunt in packs ...?)
2. The elementary level of the error made in the experimental setup (poor cable connections) would get a physics undergrad drummed out of the lab into a career in philosophy.
So, all in all, not surprsing that the leader of the debacle has seen fit to resign.
Jeff
The members of the mainstream press who blew things out of proportion and dumbed down the story...
Sorry but this time the press are most certainly NOT to blame. OPERA was by no means "scientifically fine" and they did not present it as "odd data" they specifically made the claim that neutrinos were travelling faster than light and asked for help to verify this. Read the paper if you don't believe me - it is there in the abstract. They specifically claim than the anomalous timing was consistent with faster-than-light neutrinos. This is NOT the paper you write if you have some data which seem crazy and you are not sure whether they are correct.
Something like "I have odd data but I can't figure out what I did wrong" was the start of many scientific discoveries.
Correct. However this does not mean that the moment you have some odd data you rush to publish. First you talk it over with colleagues and see if they can find fault (and OPERA did this internally which is fine). After that you could publish a paper explaining every single timing correction systematic error you have considered in full gory detail and at the end say that your final measured time of flight "appears to be" inconsistent with relativity. Better yet, for data with massive implications like this, you could invite a pannel of external reviewers to go over the data and experiment to look for mistakes with an agreement that if it is confirmed by them that they will publish their findings after the first paper laying out the full gory details.
What you do NOT do is publish an initial short paper with most of the details left out in a rush which claims the data are due to faster-than-light neutrinos. The mistake OPERA made was not in publishing but in HOW they published.
That's part of the scientific process, isn't it? Pursuing an idea until it's proven false? I don't think there'd be very many employed researchers if they were all fired for having an incorrect hypothesis.
Of course, you can't expect the bean counters making all their money off them to have any firm grasp on such concepts like logic or science.
Sounds like this story has gone through The Science News Cycle, and forced someone to resign.
After all, who needs progress when you can have sensationalist media instead?
Happy people make bad consumers.
... turning to church-based learning is the answer ...
FWIW some churches may be doing OK with respect to scientific education. The Catholic church has stated that scientific discovery is not in conflict with faith, this includes discoveries with respect to evolution. They do a bit of real cosmological science. One of their priests formulated the currently accepted origin of the universe, the big bang theory. Our western tradition of the scientific method originated with various medieval bishops. I believe various other churches have similar perspectives. Not all Christian churches are of the opinion that the universe snapped into existence, as we see it now, on a wednesday six thousand years ago. The later group just gets more TV time and create a misleading impression of Christianity.
Having a PhD in science does not make you good at the media: if anything, maybe the reverse. Working at a university I'm around a lot of highly intelligent, highly focussed people who are brilliant at their subject - and partly so because they don't give a damn about many other things. Some of them have an incredibly limited world view outside of the domain. It's almost understandable in some ways: they've got so good at their domain by spending all their time thinking about it and not spending any time keeping up on current affairs, worrying about how the local sports team is doing and so on.
Now you might argue that their university's PR time should have protected them, that's a different matter. My recollection is they came up with a controversial result, and like good scientists asked their peers to help them understand their results. I think this is the equivalent of "their friends" that you refer to - the peer community. It's how we do things in universities, we post messages or mail the global community in our domain (might only be a couple of hundred people) and ask their advice. Unfortunately the possibilities were so mind blowing that even the mainstream media saw a good story and ran with it. They didn't have a chance....
Ok, it's not a browser. But that's a trademark! I just want to say, the Opera trademark is a valid trademark. Also, Opera is the greatest!
Then I remembered that this is Italy... where the most important thing is to find someone to blame and to punish. (Remember what happens to geologists who fail to predict an earthquake?)
So the whole scheme was a fraud right even before beginning.
Wow. LoL. A Ponzi scheme right inside CERN.
Did OPERA enen turn on any switch, let alone the lights in the room.
This can lead to the destruction of CERN in a matter of a few days.
So you're saying the researchers quit FASTER than theory predicted?
This is part of the suppression of faster than light particles and anything that contradicts Einstein.
First they say it is an equipment malfunction and now they take this persons job and likely make it so he'll forever be denied jobs and funding.
He's lucky he isn't dead.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
http://www.lescienze.it/news/2012/03/30/news/opera_il_punto_di_vista_di_ereditato-937264/
Sorry i found it only in italian.
If someone is intrested i could translate it :)
The article doesn't detail exactly why he resigned but the implication is that he's taking the fall for "bad science"
this is worrisome because questioning theories (even the theory of relativity) isn't bad science, it's good science, especially when the data seems to show a contradiction.
My concern is that other scientists will be less willing to question established theories and maybe even "hide" contradicting data in fear of loosing their jobs.
What the scientists did in this series of experiments was 100% correct and there is nothing to regret. Yes there may have been errors in the experiment but there was nothing wrong with how they dealt with the results. They didn't say "Neutrinos travel faster than light", they said "We have an experiment who's results seem to contradict the theory of relativity, can someone try to verify this?"
That's good science and no one should have to resign for that.
Does "has resigned from his post" mean that he's out of a job, or just that he's no longer the guy that gets to make the public announcement the next time Relativity is brought into question?
How sad. A man forced to resign because of questioning ideology of Einstein. How low the physics has fallen.
Have you noticed that since 50's there's been no true advancement in the field of physics? We have seen only the developments of the 'better mouse traps' and an astounding amount of science fiction. How's your wormhole working today? Is it making energy or money for you? Are you getting lots of return from parallel universes? Is dark matter working hard for your retirement? You see how physics has become nonsense of purely mathematical constructs disconnected from reality. Kind of like the mathematics of the Wall Street that crashed the economy. But unlike the economy, the physicists still suck the taxpayer money dry. All this coincides with the advance of government money into physics and the firm establishment of the peer review.
For those who don't know, the peer review (in physics) was established in late 1800's under the assumption that everything that is to be found in physics, was found. There is nothing new in the Universe. From that it follows that whatever experts we have today will be enough to judge any new theory.
The proponents of peer review say that it weeds out bad apples. Virtually every major advancement in physics was a bad apple at the time. It's human nature. People who are paid to maintain status quo (and receive hefty government money for it) will not budge. Or to put it plainly, it's hard to make someone understand something, if his salary depends on him not understanding it.
The theories of Einstein and Heisenberg were published at the time when every paper was published (in the two major German journals, Annalen der Physik and Zeitschrift fur Physik). There was no peer review beyond making sure that someone doesn't claim that God makes it all happen. Of course, lots and lots and lots of garbage was published. But a few breakthroughs were published as well. This is how the physics was built. You can't have true advancement in physics if everything published must appease to everyone. Physics is not a democracy, it's not a popularity contest. The popularity contest works fine in politics, but the Universe is not that forgiving. You're either right, or you're not. The Universe will not give you Presidency just because you're popular, eloquent and know how to legally smear others.
The peer review today means that anybody with a revolutionary idea will be shut down, in the name of not being too upsetting. Derogatory and insulting terms such as 'crackpottery' are used. In reality, without upsets, there is no progress. Our own tax money is being paid to the physics establishment to promulgate what's essentially a church dogma.
This dogma says that if your work is not in concert with Einstein (and a few other demigods), it can't be right. No one in particular is presiding over this. There is no Pope in physics. Just hundreds and thousands of physicists who get their fat salaries to keep things as they are. Why? Because if there is an upset, many of them would lose jobs to make room for better theories. This would happen because most jobs in physics depend on government grants, so much so, that approximately 90% of their salaries come from government grants. What would happen if better theories were found? Grants would go somewhere else. You do the math.
Think better energy sources will be found? Think humanity will ever find true safety by going out among the stars? Want to have a sense of wonder about the future and its discoveries? Not so fast, and not with the physics as it is today, not with the people in charge of it. Sorry. The future of humankind is sacrificed for the cushy jobs of a few physicists - that you pay for yourself. Congratulations everyone, good job!