I am very happy to see your replies to my post.

You are right, that blogging represents a new vector for communicating scientific results both to the general public and also within the scientific community. In fact, this is why each of us needs to think about how to use that new vector – this is the real point of my post. Extremes are obviously bad: peddling too much blather will pollute this new vector, and a too strict and narrow channel will become sterile and redundant with physics journals. Why don’t we see how things develop – especially now that we have something really important to blog about…

One thing though: of the 6000+ physicists on CMS and ATLAS, only a very small fraction divulge the results of their colleagues – or their own results. Yes, you are right, some colleagues (even distinguished ones) will not be able to resist talking about discovery data. That *is* the way of the world. But I work amongst all those people, young and old, who hold their tongue and wait for the grand event.

cheers!
Michael

and he also said:
“… Notice that I’m not posting plots …”.

Since it is the plots,
not the opinions of “the majority of the particle physics community worldwide”,
that tell the story of whether the peaks support (or not) a
a single Higgs with Standard Model cross section,
I think that it is irresponsible to quote rumors of opinions
without quoting at least some plots to support those opinions,
especially when Peter Woit’s words imply that he has seen the plots and is withholding them.

In short, I think that unless you are free to share plots,
you should shut up until ICHEP
(unless CERN releases plots sooner).

Tony

PS – My apologies if this comment is sent in duplicate.
I am having problems with my interface.

and he also said:
“… Notice that I’m not posting plots …”.

Since it is the plots,
not the opinions of “the majority of the particle physics community worldwide”,
that tell the story of whether the peaks support (or not) a
a single Higgs with Standard Model cross section,
I think that it is irresponsible to quote rumors of opinions
without quoting at least some plots to support those opinions,
especially when Peter Woit’s words imply that he has seen the plots and is withholding them.

In short, my view is that if you are not free to share plots,
you should shut up until ICHEP
(unless CERN makes them available sooner).

Tony

I’m probably more tired than you of the heated comments about string theory and SUSY…

String theory is by now a very tired topic, with nothing new to say about it. The fact that LHC results are finally falsifying the very popular but misguided speculative ideas about TeV scale physics that have dominated the subject for the past couple three decades is a big story that deserves attention, so I’ll keep covering that.

I probably should stick to blogging about things that I know about that are much more positive, but I suspect that you really won’t enjoy my blog once it becomes devoted to the mathematical structures behind BRST and Langlands theory. I promise though to throw in some scandal and gossip…

Peter

Actually I think the fraction of scandal and gossip I purvey on the blog hasn’t changed over the last 8 years, but people can judge for themselves. Personally I happen to like scandal and gossip, but only when it’s accurate. I do the best I can to maintain high standards of accuracy in all scandal and gossip purveyed. This includes the latest news about the Higgs (I’ve added some clarifications there, since the initial posting was an iphone effort that some people misinterpreted).

The bottom line here is that over the last couple weeks, 6000+ particle physicists, the majority of the particle physics community worldwide, have seen or heard about preliminary analyses of data from their experiments which pretty conclusively confirm the existence of the Higgs. This is huge, historical news, and I don’t happen to see why it shouldn’t be shared at this point with the rest of the particle physics community. Notice that I’m not posting plots, or much in the way of detail. We all look forward to the day not too far from now when the best results possible from the new data are released, and we can all give heartfelt thanks to those like you who worked hard to get there.

Blogs introduce a new vector for the spread of rumors, but surely you’re aware that historically the news of a big result has circulated fairly widely among physicists in the days and weeks before an announcement, often in highly inaccurate form. The current official policy that no one on an HEP experiment should breath a word about results before the public announcement doesn’t correspond to the historical reality of the field. For instance, I remember going to tea at Princeton one day as a grad student back in the 80s, where I joined a group listening to Carlo Rubbia explain to everyone, with details, that his group had the top quark “in the bag”. That’s obviously not much of a good model for how to do things either, but the model of “no one will say anything at all to anyone” is neither realistic nor grounded in past practice.