http://pdg.lbl.gov/2016/tables/rpp2016-qtab-mesons.pdf http://pdg.lbl.gov/2016/tables/rpp2016-qtab-baryons.pdf
From their website:
"In the 2014 Review, the listings include 3,283 new measurements from 899 papers, in addition to 32,000 measurements from 9,000 papers that appeared in earlier editions. Evaluations of these properties are abstracted in summary tables."
Surely, there could not be any error here. Nothing socially constructed.
Isn't it already borders nonsense that in the universe which is sustained by a couple of fundamental conservation laws there supposed to be hundreds of elementary (presumably fundamental) particles which emerge and disintegrate in time, which is not even an intrinsic property of "more real" things like photons.
There could be. Physicists have been trying very hard for the last 40 years to find something the standard model cannot explain, without success. Some experimentalists are actually disappointed about this.
> Isn't it already borders nonsense that in the universe which is sustained by a couple of fundamental conservation laws there supposed to be hundreds of elementary (presumably fundamental) particles which emerge and disintegrate in time, which is not even an intrinsic property of "more real" things like photons.
You are confused. The standard model has 17 elementary particles (+ anti particles). There are a lot of composite particles, like the ones the article talks about. Not sure what you mean about decays, but photons are a special case, because they move at the speed of light. Other elementary particles, like the heavier quarks, can and do decay.
Here are two independent examples that agree in their results: experimental measurements at the LHC; theoretical predictions from QFT.
There has been times when Hegelian "logic" has been accepted, published by Oxford University press, peer-reviewed, highly praised and successfully taught to students. I have read parts of Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. I have read it after The Principles of Mathematics and things like Haskell Prelude.
I have read peer-reviewed commentaries to The Highest Yoga Tantra and such crap like commentaries to Hatha Yoga Pradipika by some Australian lady with some funny Hindu nickname.
I have read even beautiful sufi texts in which they freely mix and match anthropomorphic qualities to produce a beautiful carpet of linguistic patterns which describe nothing that exist. Peer-reviewed and highly praised, of course.
Socially constructed nonsense is not something rare and uncommon. To the contrary, most of publicly available information is bullshit, or at least highly inaccurate, full of meaningless generalizations, flawed logic and amounts to nothing but mere compilation of current memes.
So, I am more or less familiar with how such things could emerge. My question is - what is a single falsifiable experiment which proves that this is not socially constructed, highly sophisticated sectarian set of beliefs supported by complex (but meaningless) simulations (instead of mere a book of dogma).
There is plenty of stuff in science that is imperfect and deeply flawed. Look at all the poorly reproduced studies on various nutrition and health products, for example. The Standard model is not part of that weak set.
The way to oppose social construction is increased rigor and experimentation. The Standard Model has some of the highest rigor and largest amount of experiments backing it.
Can you describe how such an experiment might be constructed?
One, to verify the Model (after all, if its predictions fail in some part it will have to be revised).
Another, to verify the characteristics of the predicted particles (there might be some differences from the prediction that are important, but not hypothesis-breaking).
Finally, however unlikely and yet most excitingly (to me at least), to open new avenues of questioning and hypothesis up by really throwing into question some things.