Book Review: The Higgs Fake, by Alexander Unzicker
This book is an interesting introduction to the very complex subject of the search for the Higgs particle. The author’s complete disdain for the current state of particle physics, and many of the people who are doing it, makes for entertaining reading. I like hearing physicists swear and talk trash.
As a student, I took quite a few courses at Fermilab, the particle accelerator in Batavia Illinois. At the time it seemed quite natural, that the world’s most famous particle accelerator would force its top physicists to give public lectures to interested of young scientists. In hindsight, it was probably no easy task for to Leon Lederman, the director of the time, to force his people to do such a thing, taking away valuable time from their difficult research. As a young scientist it was a very valuable set of impressions for me. In the ordinary classroom when we learn about science, the people get washed away into a kind of gray, one dimensional entity called “a scientist.” Sitting there on Saturday mornings and listening to the very top particle physicist scientists of the world, one perceives directly their personalities, hopes and fears, aspirations and difficulties.
I didn’t necessarily have the words for it at the time, but here began for me the seeds of a certain kind of questioning about the scientific process. One physicist would get up to the stage, and I would be just naturally drawn to him or her. I would feel, “I would like to learn about the science this person is producing.” A second person would get up, and everything about their tone and manner repulsed me. Now a very different feeling, “Why would I want to hear about science produced by such a person?” In our ordinary education, the nature of the person is always separated from the nature of the science. It is somehow assumed that good science only requires taking careful measurements, and correctly applying the scientific method. I think very differently now, the time and directly involved with attempting to build new models to describe cosmological phenomenon. I see clearly for both myself and for the other members of my team, that the type of people we are very much influences the type of models or theories that come out of us. What do I mean by “the type of people we are”? It’s everything from are we open minded, do we hate other types of people, do we have a good sense of humor, do we care about making our children’s lives better, or only about ourselves or our little interests. What kind of a moral compass do we have? Are we gentle or harsh with each other? All of these things matter, they matter a lot, they matter a lot more than most of us think possible.
I cannot connect that last thought directly back to the book and a smooth weight, so I'll just go back to the book.
The author points out that even if we use particle physics' owns standard for what was previously accepted as proof, the results do not even live up to those previous standards. So was anything found? The people leading the experiment, in charge of spending all those millions and millions of dollars, have claimed success. Is there anybody who can, or wants to, reassess the entire analysis from a point of view that does not assume success?
The instrument calibration and data analysis are not made public. The data itself is also not public. So at this point it is impossible for anyone else to do an independent analysis. This means the entire scientific adventure is not reproducible. It could be that it would take just too much effort to write all that down in a way that other scientists could reproduce. I could understand that. It could be that there is a strong sense of ownership, so there is no actual desire to share anything. I could also believe that. It could be that the calibration and analysis are so biased, so strongly geared toward getting the results they want, that if anyone else were to see it, the whole venture would be called into question. I could also believe that. Believe what you want but it is certainly a unique situation the scientific community has found itself in.
Mr. Unzicker uses the story of the Higgs to get across his very strong feelings about the larger question of particle physics over the last half century: that many of the fundamental discoveries of particle physics and the standard model are built on extremely poor data, and highly suspect models. He has done some work to go back and elucidate these difficult points. He also references some other books that do the same, if anyone is interested. But as he points out, who is really going to do all that work? If anyone has a alternate theory about how to describe the world of subatomic particles, they are not going to waste their time pointing out every wrong turn over the last 50 years. That is not even possible for one person or a small group of people. Particle physics over the last 50 years has been built upon the work of thousands of people, most of whom don't actually understand what the person next door is doing. So if anybody has a new idea about how things should be, they are going to focus on their new idea.