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Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#21

Post by radicaldreamer »

storywatch wrote: post #18
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #2

That's the best part about science.

It's good for the world but terrible for the practitioners in academia. Imagine you are in your last year of your PhD and then something new comes out and completely invalidates/obsoletes your results. Cough natural language processing PhDs during COVID when GPT-3 came around..

This happens in biology all the time.

PHDs will spend years mastering some intricate multi-day long procedure to do some thing and a new discovery will obviate the need for the procedure completely.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#22

Post by applfanboysbgon »

glenstein wrote: post #17
ceejayoz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall had to drink a beaker of Helicobacter pylori because no one would believe it caused ulcers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis wound up in an insane asylum for suggesting surgeons should wash their hands. Scientists get hidebound just like the rest of us, at times.

Those are definitely unfortunate examples and I can see how those environments pushed them to their limits. But if we're talking large-scale systematic thinking about what kind of data would be necessary to show that there's such a thing as a typical, characteristic civilization scale negative reaction to scientific revolutions, these don't demonstrate that this is the usual case. Obviously they're important in their…

The point being made is about the general reaction to weird results. The original supposition was that it would be implausible for scientists at large to have an adverse reaction to results that defied their current worldview. Given that we have seen this play out, there is in fact nothing implausible about it at all.

The specifics (proton-scale supercomputers sabotaging scientific experiments by altering the outcomes into incoherent results, the adverse reaction being suicide) aren't important here, because that's obviously the realm of fiction -- we don't need an actual instance of scientists committing suicide to suggest that it's plausible, because we don't have an actual instance of proton-scale supercomputers sabotaging results[1]. We just need to acknowledge that adverse reactions to unexpected results do happen, so plausibly in a fictional story if you have very unexpected results then your scientists could have very adverse reactions as well.

[1] That we know of.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#23

Post by onraglanroad »

ceejayoz wrote: post #9
pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you mean? I cannot remember any particular scientific revolution where scientists were suicidal, or even particularly crestfallen. Quantum Mechanics is the closest thing I can think of, where Einstein famously refused to accept some of the implications, and where scientists had great disagreements about things like the Copenhagen interpretation and what it means for the actual nature of reality - but I don't t…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall had to drink a beaker of Helicobacter pylori because no one would believe it caused ulcers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis wound up in an insane asylum for suggesting surgeons should wash their hands. Scientists get hidebound just like the rest of us, at times.

Both examples from medicine rather than physics. Can you give an example from physics? Preferably from the last century or two?

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#24

Post by tansey »

storywatch wrote: post #18
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #2

That's the best part about science.

It's good for the world but terrible for the practitioners in academia. Imagine you are in your last year of your PhD and then something new comes out and completely invalidates/obsoletes your results. Cough natural language processing PhDs during COVID when GPT-3 came around..

Academic here. It's actually great for us. You're usually the first to see the implications for your niche area and have a chance to get a hot paper out rather than a moderately impactful one.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#25

Post by ceejayoz »

glenstein wrote: post #17
ceejayoz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall had to drink a beaker of Helicobacter pylori because no one would believe it caused ulcers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis wound up in an insane asylum for suggesting surgeons should wash their hands. Scientists get hidebound just like the rest of us, at times.

Those are definitely unfortunate examples and I can see how those environments pushed them to their limits. But if we're talking large-scale systematic thinking about what kind of data would be necessary to show that there's such a thing as a typical, characteristic civilization scale negative reaction to scientific revolutions, these don't demonstrate that this is the usual case. Obviously they're important in their…

> In the book, it's a very intentional sabotage campaign.

Active malice seems more likely to succeed, doesn't it?

They can gaslight people in their own heads, after all.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#26

Post by dguest »

black6 wrote: post #13
pavel_lishin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading the Three Body Problem, and thinking to myself: this is implausible. If scientists started getting weird results, they'd be thrilled , not suicidal!

They were getting inconsistent results, not just weird ones. However I agree that suicide probably wouldn't be where they would end up.

I seem to remember something about the scientist being distraught because physics didn't make sense, not because she was having trouble getting clean data.

That also stuck with me as weird: there are any number of places you could sabotage a precision physics experiment by injecting tiny amounts of noise, which would drive the scientists to think they were bad scientists. Instead they thought science was broken.

As someone who has looked for inconsistencies with the Standard Model for a while now, and seen every measurement land bang-on the prediction, I can say that I would love any deviation that said our existing theories are broken.

And sure, crank up the detector noise and we'd be sad, but ask any grad student: having your apparatus suddenly spit out garbage data is just an average day. I've known plenty of scientists with psychological problems but it's never coming from their data.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#27

Post by wuliwong »

colechristensen wrote: post #12

I really dislike the writing style of being so "friendly" for people who don't know anything about the space that you obscure what the topic of the article is at all. It's a third of the way through the article when "g-2", the problem at hand, is mentioned. Information that should have been shared in the title took a third of the article to figure out.

You dislike that people write for audiences other than yourself.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#29

Post by traes »

ben_w wrote: post #19
pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you mean? I cannot remember any particular scientific revolution where scientists were suicidal, or even particularly crestfallen. Quantum Mechanics is the closest thing I can think of, where Einstein famously refused to accept some of the implications, and where scientists had great disagreements about things like the Copenhagen interpretation and what it means for the actual nature of reality - but I don't t…

One of the boldest chapter one introductions I've ever seen comes to mind: Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. - "States of Matter", David L. Goodstein, https://archive.org/details/statesofmatter0000good_e2n5/page...

A very interesting story that's worth reading up on. "Natural philosophers" of the day refused to accept the idea of a particle too small to directly observe on purely philosophical grounds. They essentially bullied him out of the field for championing the idea of the atom, despite his math yielding numerous correct results. They fruitlessly pursued the idea of energetics instead. (One of the many instances of die hard philosophers playing the villain in physics history. See also why Emmy Noether wasn't given a professorship despite a letter of recommendation from Albert Einstein.)

This makes it perhaps not a particularly good example of the phenomena being discussed, as he was suicidal not because of what he had discovered, but because no one believed what he had discovered.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#30

Post by ben_w »

traes wrote: post #29
ben_w wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the boldest chapter one introductions I've ever seen comes to mind: Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. - "States of Matter", David L. Goodstein, https://archive.org/details/statesofmatter0000good_e2n5/page...

A very interesting story that's worth reading up on. "Natural philosophers" of the day refused to accept the idea of a particle too small to directly observe on purely philosophical grounds. They essentially bullied him out of the field for championing the idea of the atom, despite his math yielding numerous correct results. They fruitlessly pursued the idea of energetics instead. (One of the many instances of die ha…

> See also why Emmy Noether wasn't given a professorship despite a letter of recommendation from Albert Einstein

I thought that was sexism rather than philosophers? This was the same era and place that mostly ignored Bertha Benz.

(Or did you mean after moving to the USA?)

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