Has physics cried wolf too often? | Jon Butterworth | Life & Physics

Mistakes are embarrassing, and getting over-excited about a statisitical anomaly is silly. But these things happen, and the answer to building public confidence in science is not to pretend that they don't

Last week I wrote about a possible signal for exciting new physics, seen in data from the two big "general purpose detectors" at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. I was trying as carefully as I could to steer a course between being over-excited and overly conservative. It is difficult to be sure that your judgement is correct in such cases, but it is important to try. After all to quote Richard Feynman, in science

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool