| Dodece said: I have serious reservations about this announcement, and I find this disclosure highly irresponsible. |
It is 100% confirmed by any reasonable standard. I would normally agree with you but it's just not like that.
In fact the physicists are being too conservative. It's been independently confirmed to five sigma by two different experiments and three sigma by a third (Tevatron in the US), and has involved tens of teams independently analysing the dataset. There is no possibility for error like the experiments you mentioned. We have a new particle, and it's overwhemingly likely based on the kind of data that it's a Higgs. If it's not a Higgs that's even BIGGER news.
"Disclosure" had to happen soon anyway, ALL the CERN data is public and streamed to every university in Europe working on particle physics; if they hadn't announced a university would have done so within days.
