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CERN's Higgs Boson Discovery Passes Peer Review Publication Hurdle
MrSeb writes "CERN's announcement on July 4 — that experiments performed by the Large Hadron Collider had discovered a particle that was consistent with the Higgs boson — has passed a key step towards becoming ratified science: Its findings have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Physics Letters B, effectively becoming science in the process. Before we actually know what the new particle is, CERN, the LHC, and the CMS and ATLAS teams must perform additional tests. The LHC had been scheduled to shut down for upgrades, but following the July announcement it has instead been smashing protons together nonstop, to produce more data for CMS and ATLAS to analyze. By December, it is hoped that both teams will have a much better idea of the properties of the new particle, and whether it is actually the Higgs boson."
Where is your god particle now?!
No, it is news in the same way that the January innageration of the winner of the US Presidential election will be news ( the winner having been announced in november). It won't be a suprise to anyone or really change anyone's life, but it will be a historical milestone that happens.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The impact factor of Physics Letters B is a mere 3.5. Not a high-profile journal by any means. This is a place where somewhat interesting results are published, not a place where one of the most important particle physics discoveries of the last decades should be published (Phys. Rev. Letters, Nature, Science, would come to mind as high-profile journals). This is a definite red herring.
In contrast to what many people think, passing peer review is not all that important. Among scientists, there is no such thing as 'ratified science'. This is only something that needs to be done to get a paper published in an scientific journal. That would be important if the publishers were trying to make other scientist aware of their findings or if they need publications in peer reviewed journals in order to secure money. Neither of those is really the case here.
What the hell is ratified science? Peer review is an important part of the scientific process, but make no mistake there is no process or entity (journals, institutions, or otherwise) which officiates scientific process. Our state of understanding of the universe is in a constant state of flux; even work that has been peer reviewed can be proven wrong by later work, or work that has been rejected by peers can later be proven correct. Peer-reviewed research has a little more credibility than otherwise, true. However, this talk about "how research becomes science" seems reminiscent of "how a bill becomes a law," and the scientific process simply doesn't work like that.
Well you do know that this is not yet pinned down as the Higgs boson!
"...Its findings have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Physics Letters B, effectively becoming science in the process..."
This is nonsense. There is no requirement for 'peer review' before something 'becomes science'. Peer review can give a bit more authority (though it often has the opposite effect, of closing down the truth in favour of an establishment consensus, as happened, for instance, with the Piltdown Man fiasco.).
Science works quite simply. Someone writes up a hypothesis, with evidence. If someone - anyone - can find a flaw, the hypothesis is disproven. It doesn't matter if the paper is written up by the Head of CERN, and a greengrocer from a nearby town disproves it - if it's disproven, it's gone.
The idea that peer review is what MAKES science is a deeply dangerous one. It implies that there is a specific class of people who are the only ones allowed to 'know' technical things, or who are allowed to comment on them. It implies that people must agree with this technological elite, and are banned from thinking for themselves...
No, it really isn't, though that would be the leading hypothesis and if there were betting pools on particle physics that's where the smart money would be. But much like how you can argue and bet on a sporting event but at the end of the day you need to wait for the game to play out, so too do they need to conduct many more experiments to actually figure out if it is what they think it is.
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Depends a lot on the field. There are probably a lot more errors in medicine than in physics.
Is this particle "consistent" with what we believe to be a Higgs Boson, or is it actually a Higgs Boson?
It's within the expected mass range, but its properties have yet to be determined, making it a Higgs candidate.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Nope, it isn't. It's a boson, that's for sure, but its properties are not very well established yet. It really looks like a Higgs boson, or something quite similar, but that will take more measurement to tell for sure.
Eg: we're not certain yet whether it has spin 0 (like a Higgs boson should have), or spin 2.
Consensus has nothing to do with science. Following the scientific method is science.
And the particle the people at CERN have discovered is consistent with what we believe to be a Higgs boson, and might therefore actually be one. We haven't had time to do enough experiments to tell. The only things we know about the particle is that it's there and that it has a mass of ~126 GeV. We're assuming that it's the Higgs, because the Higgs is the only particle that is missing with a mass in that neighbourhood. (Gravitons ought to be heavier, as do dark matter, etc.)
I promise to be more trusting and less vigilant in the future.
Why don't you try being more vigilant, as in actually trying to discover the answer to your questions instead of asking them rhetorically and trusting that your own assumptions must be right?
The enemies of Democracy are