Forgive me for being a bit slow, but I honestly don’t understand what you mean. I don’t know why their publishing the results needs explanation; they already said it was because they couldn’t find an error and are hoping that someone else will find one if it’s there. Is your point that the fact that CERN published this rather than someone else is to be taken as evidence of its veracity? Or do you mean something else?
Lets say you’re a physicist maximizing utility. It’s pretty embarrassing to publish results with mistakes in them and the more important the results the more embarrassing it would be to announce results later shown to be the product of some kind of incompetence. So one can usually expect published results of serious import to have been checked over and over for errors.
But the calculus changes when we introduce the incentive of discovering something before anyone else. This is particularly the case when the discovery is likely to lead to a Nobel prize. In this case a physicist might be less diligent about checking the work in order to make sure she is the first out with the new results.
Now in this case CERN-OPERA is pretty much the only game in town. No one else can measure this many neutrinos with this kind of accuracy. So it would seem like they could take all the time they needed to check all the possible sources of error. But if Hyena is right that OPERA’s data is/was shortly going to be public then they risk someone outside CERN-OPERA noticing the deviation from expected delay and publishing the results. By itself that is pretty embarrassing and it introduces some controversy regarding who deserves credit for the discovery.
Now after watching the presentation I get the sense that they really did check everything they could think of and it sounds like they took about six months to prepare analysis. It also sounds like all the relevant calibration issues are just too tricky and complex for anyone outside the CERN-OPERA to be the first to publish without risking embarrassment. Nor do I know for sure what kind of access to the results was available to outside physicists. So I think the alleged effect was at most minimal. But to update on publication requires a good model of the incentives the physicists faced.
Now in this case CERN-OPERA is pretty much the only game in town. No one else can measure this many neutrons with this kind of accuracy
Neutrinos not neutrons (very different particles. Neutrons are much better understood and easier to work with.)
There’s work in the US at Fermilab which could reasonably measure things at this level of accuracy. I don’t know much about the Japanese work by stuff related to SK might be able to do similar things. Other than those issues your analysis seems accurate. None of these points detract from the general thrust of your argument.
I think Fermilab-MINOS can measure such things but I believe I read they have to update and recalibrate a bunch of things to get more accuracy, first. (Recall MINOS already saw this same effect but not at a statistically significant level. Obviously, they now have an incentive to improve their accuracy.)
My point is that CERN’s publication of the anomaly is implied by its existence and an assumption that CERN minimally competent to run a high-level research project. Therefore, the publication itself gives us no information we did not already have. (The paper itself doesn’t even really give us anything important by noting the anomaly, either, since our beliefs are about the implications of the anomaly, so its existence in itself can’t be part of the calculation.)
Forgive me for being a bit slow, but I honestly don’t understand what you mean. I don’t know why their publishing the results needs explanation; they already said it was because they couldn’t find an error and are hoping that someone else will find one if it’s there. Is your point that the fact that CERN published this rather than someone else is to be taken as evidence of its veracity? Or do you mean something else?
Lets say you’re a physicist maximizing utility. It’s pretty embarrassing to publish results with mistakes in them and the more important the results the more embarrassing it would be to announce results later shown to be the product of some kind of incompetence. So one can usually expect published results of serious import to have been checked over and over for errors.
But the calculus changes when we introduce the incentive of discovering something before anyone else. This is particularly the case when the discovery is likely to lead to a Nobel prize. In this case a physicist might be less diligent about checking the work in order to make sure she is the first out with the new results.
Now in this case CERN-OPERA is pretty much the only game in town. No one else can measure this many neutrinos with this kind of accuracy. So it would seem like they could take all the time they needed to check all the possible sources of error. But if Hyena is right that OPERA’s data is/was shortly going to be public then they risk someone outside CERN-OPERA noticing the deviation from expected delay and publishing the results. By itself that is pretty embarrassing and it introduces some controversy regarding who deserves credit for the discovery.
Now after watching the presentation I get the sense that they really did check everything they could think of and it sounds like they took about six months to prepare analysis. It also sounds like all the relevant calibration issues are just too tricky and complex for anyone outside the CERN-OPERA to be the first to publish without risking embarrassment. Nor do I know for sure what kind of access to the results was available to outside physicists. So I think the alleged effect was at most minimal. But to update on publication requires a good model of the incentives the physicists faced.
Neutrinos not neutrons (very different particles. Neutrons are much better understood and easier to work with.)
There’s work in the US at Fermilab which could reasonably measure things at this level of accuracy. I don’t know much about the Japanese work by stuff related to SK might be able to do similar things. Other than those issues your analysis seems accurate. None of these points detract from the general thrust of your argument.
Edited- Neutrinos, obviously. Brain fart.
I think Fermilab-MINOS can measure such things but I believe I read they have to update and recalibrate a bunch of things to get more accuracy, first. (Recall MINOS already saw this same effect but not at a statistically significant level. Obviously, they now have an incentive to improve their accuracy.)
I think Hyena means they had a reason to publish other than believing the result is correct.
Correct.
My point is that CERN’s publication of the anomaly is implied by its existence and an assumption that CERN minimally competent to run a high-level research project. Therefore, the publication itself gives us no information we did not already have. (The paper itself doesn’t even really give us anything important by noting the anomaly, either, since our beliefs are about the implications of the anomaly, so its existence in itself can’t be part of the calculation.)
Ah. Thank you for clarifying!