News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Tevatron confirms a 115-135 GeV Higgs. Parent comment

Re:Tevatron confirms a 115-135 GeV Higgs by spauka on Wednesday March 07, 2012 @08:24PM (#3678204)
Not just a little strong, its bullshit... 2.2 sigma still leads to about a 4-5% chance of random error, and in particle physics that is an absolutely MASSIVE margin of error.

As people have been saying, Physicists probably won't get truly excited about this discovery until 5 sigma, or a 99.9999% confidence interval.

Articles with titles like this mislead the public and in my opinion do more harm than good because they stop people from thinking critically about whether there are flaws in the process, instead leading them to take things for given.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Tevatron confirms a 115-135 GeV Higgs by aptwebapps on Wednesday March 07, 2012 @11:58PM (#3678630)
>Articles with titles like this mislead the public and in my opinion do more harm than good because they stop people from thinking critically about whether there are flaws in the process, instead leading them to take things for given.

I was with you up until the 'thinking critically' part. When did that start?

[ Parent | on HN ]