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Why Were So Many "Crazy" Higgs Boson Stories Published?
The presumed discovery of the Higgs boson may be one of the most important scientific discoveries ever, but it did bring out quite a bit of "strange" science reporting. In addition to blogs, many mainstream news sites jumped on the crazy headline bandwagon. The ability to soon travel at the speed of light, the building of a Star Trek style transporter, and many stories of the particle proving God doesn't exist have made the rounds in the past week. Is the particle's discovery just on the fringe of common scientific knowledge and therefore prone to wild speculation, or does this all come down to having the most sensational headline?
Let me steal this first post to invite fellow slashdotters to a Higgs Boson Scientists Launch Party next weekend in San Francisco. We have friendly people, interesting discussions and huge orgy. Everyone is welcome to come! WOOOHOOO
The exact same reasons we read headlines about creating universe eating black holes when the thing started up.. about global pandemics that are going to wipe us all out.. about “Africanized” bees. It gets eyeball time, which is what it’s all about.
“A long held theory has been possibly confirmed”
Vs.
“THE FUTURE IS HERE, LIVE LIKE THE JETSONS IN 5 YEARS!”
One of those is going to sell a _lot_ more toothpaste.
I didn't see any articles like that, are you confusing random small blogs for mainstream news sites? Or was this an American news thing?
I'm waiting for the one-time-application tooth-enamel-protector we will surely have in 5 years thanks to the discovery of the Higgs!
Sorry advertisers, your current pre-Higgs-announcement product lines are already obsolete so I won't be buying any of them.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Science journalism sucks.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
As an atheist, I cannot accept the existence of a god particle. Now if you call it the particle known as 42, then I'm good.
Nothing goes faster than C
(besides assembly, but who does assembly?)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
And journalists are morons.
Calling Higgs boson "The God Particle" is probably the greatest marketing decision in the history of science.
Stupid sells even better than sex.
WALSTIB!
When it comes to quantum physics, almost everyone is a moron.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/opinion/sunday/q-and-a-the-higgs-boson-and-you.html
Don't even try to read the rest of it, unless you like wasting your time.
Based on this famous quote:
“Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.” -Eleanor Roosevelt
That would put this sort of annoying Higgs boson chatter squarely in the realm of average minds.
They can usually come up with something good to say about events most of us understand. But they can't understand the Higgs boson. Doesn't matter: the media is all about generating copy, this is the highest imperative. Making sense is secondary. And so not understanding doesn't prevent them from trying to say something. Nor should it, according to the logic of their profession, since the logic of their profession says the editorial has to be filed on time, the column must fit so many square inches of space, the front page must have timely links about today's news.
And so they all come up with this WHARRGARBL like the NY Times story above. Welcome to the media industry.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Perhaps it shows how much people are waiting for the next frontier to happen. You know .. space ships and robot hookers ... in fact .. forget about the spaceships.
I wanted to be a theoretical physicist when I grew up (oh, childhood dreams) and I've got an above average understanding of particle physics just from my general fascination with the subject. Even I have a tough time grasping the nitty gritty details of the Higgs field. The sensationalism stems from 1. The general population not understanding particle physics and 2. The general population not understanding the nature of the announcement. The Higgs wasn't so much discovered as it was confirmed to be exactly where we expected it to be all along. No new technology will come out of this so much as our understanding of the universe has been strengthened considerably - we're on the right track with the Standard Model after all.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Higgs-Boson Party at my house! Beer! Party hats! Quantum Physics! Whooo!
...I'm uncertain about Quantum Physics...
#include <disclaimer.h>
I like to try to stay reasonably well-informed relative to the general population, but I still needed about 2 hours of looking up summary articles and digging through wikipedia entries to make any goddamn sense of what was actually discovered, and what importance it has to progress in physics research. My highschool science classes never discussed anything below the atomic level. I had absolutely no awareness of where the Higgs Boson was theoretically supposed to fit into the "Standard Model" since I'd never even heard of the Standard Model either.
Pretty sure the vast majority of the population still has no clue what the Higgs Boson hullaballoo entails. It's easy for misinformation to propagate on this subject because the audience has virtually no context.
Everybody is actually both a moron and a genius at the same time, until observed.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I wish I has karma to give you, as I was coming to say the same thing.
The wikipedia entry on the Higgs Boson has some quotes from the author who nicknamed the Higgs Boson "the god particle":
While use of this term may have contributed to increased media interest, many scientists dislike it, since it is sensational and overstates the particle's importance. Its discovery would still leave unanswered questions about the unification of quantum chromodynamics, the electroweak interaction, and gravity, as well as the ultimate origin of the universe. Higgs, an atheist himself, is displeased that the Higgs particle is nicknamed the "God particle", because the term "might offend people who are religious".
Lederman said he gave it a nickname because the particle is "so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive," and added that he chose "the God particle" because "the publisher wouldn't let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing."
I understand he did it so his book had a catchy title, but the media decided to go crazy when talking about it. Sure, it's a big discovery to physicists and understanding how our universe works, it really shouldn't be receiving the coverage it's getting. There is just too many ignorant reporters trying to explain something, which is creating a lot of mis-information.
Its not what it is, its something else.
Journalism sucks. But let me qualify. Science journalism and journalism in general suck when they're written to beat the deadline in attempt to be "fresh" or "hot off the press" (conference). You can picture the reporter emailing his or her story to the editorial department and the editor, finding the report, a bit dull decides to sex it up just a little, adding "factoids" lifted from Google or Wikipedia (the two not being mutually exclusive) or making snappy generalizations that can reduce to two or three words WTF the whole event is about.
Let's be honest, which would you rather read: "God particle may explain creation" or "CERN scientists discover new subatomic particle"?
A common trick in newspaper headlines is to give off the impression of certainty where there is none. When you read something like "500 feared dead" the day after a disaster, you can be sure that the "500" is an approximation that most likely came from some random bloke or bureaucart.
Wait a few more weeks or months, and the science reporting will get more sober.
I propose we rename the Higgs Boson "the spaghetti particle" or "the noodley particle" or to be truly sensational, "the pirate particle." Though I do suppose that "the invisible pink particle" would also be appropriate.
Learn to assembly.
American journalists are idiots when it comes to science reporting. They even fail at the "Mr. Wizard" level of science. It's truly abysmal.
And I took so long typing this, because I could not find the series of physics programs I grew up with as a kid in the early 70s. They involved a quite intense physics professor, and he used phrases like "boys and girls" when explaining things like magnetism and diamagnetism or thermal expansion and had this ... unique way of pronouncing "thermometer" as "thermal meter"
It was on WGBH and it was a Canadian import.
Halp. This is driving me nuts.
But anyway, I was going to say that journalists also fail at that level too.
--
BMO
Higgs-Boson Party at my house! Beer! Party hats! Quantum Physics! Whooo!
...I'm uncertain about Quantum Physics...
That is just her stripper name.
I imagine it may have had something to do with the number of articles that talked about the role Linux played in the discovery of the higgs.
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/07/05/1855212/linux-played-a-vital-role-in-discovery-of-higgs-boson
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&site=webhp&source=hp&q=linux+higgs&oq=linux+higgs&gs_l=hp.3..0i8i30.1397.8592.0.9661.15.12.3.0.0.0.391.2274.1j7j3j1.12.0...0.0.JkXqKuaocrQ
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Case closed.
First of all, what was found is a particle with the same MASS as that predicted by the standard model. They haven't yet confirmed spin or other properties. But what this amounts to is confirmation of what was already suspected. Unfortunately, this isn't all that helpful, because we already know that the standard model doesn't predict everything correctly. If we hadn't found the Higgs Boson, then perhaps it would have helped us to fix the standard model. As it is, this can't help us improve the standard model. In other words, this is great, and it's nice to know that brilliant scientists in the past century were right, but it isn't any kind of revolutionary progress.
I propose we rename the Higgs Boson "the spaghetti particle" or "the noodley particle" or to be truly sensational, "the pirate particle." Though I do suppose that "the invisible pink particle" would also be appropriate.
I like "Pirate Particle."
Maybe the RIAA will try and sue it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
"We interpret the new particle at the Large Hadron Collider as a CP-even scalar and investigate its electroweak quantum number. Assuming an unbroken custodial invariance as suggested by precision electroweak measurements, only four possibilities are allowed if the scalar decays to pairs of gauge bosons, as exemplified by a dilaton/radion, a non-dilatonic electroweak singlet scalar, an electroweak doublet scalar, and electroweak triplet scalars. We show that current LHC data already strongly disfavor both the dilatonic and non-dilatonic singlet imposters. On the other hand, a generic Higgs doublet and a triplet imposter give equally good fits to the measured event rates of the newly observed scalar resonance, although a Standard Model Higgs boson gives a slightly better overall fit. The global fit indicates the enhancement in the diphoton channel could be attributed to an enhanced partial decay width, while the production rates are consistent with the Standard Model expectations. We emphasize that more precise measurements of the ratio of event rates in the WW over ZZ channels, as well as the event rates in bb and tau tau channels, are needed to distinguish the Higgs doublet from the triplet imposter. "
http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.1093
Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: 'Higgs Boson.'
Ben: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in the Higgs Boson particle. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal.
That's why lots of sites had articles like this.
If you ignored the obvious idiot sites, I thought the general reaction to the Higgs Boson was pretty good. Idiot sites like ABC, CBC, MSNBC and CNN.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
In modern field theory a "particle" could just as well be described as "the tip of a noodly appendage, poking through into reality."
Aha! *Now* I understand why everyone is talking about the Higgs Bosom!
What are noodly appendages but strings?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm more of the opinion that the problem lies on the 'frontiers of journalism'. The days of investigative journalists and science journalists are long gone, at least in the US (and unfortunately they're winding down in the UK and Canada as well). There used to be a day when you would look at the newstand in the grocery store and see actual news, but today if it doesn't feature one of the Kardashian sluts or Tom Cruise the only place to buy it is on the back rack at the book store.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin