I’ve been thinking about it since this yesterday, and I’ve finally decided to take the plunge: I’m going to say a few words about the blogosphere debate on the CDF “ghost muon” paper. I know that, by the demanding standards of the Internet, this is old news; the posts that started the mess were an eternity ago, last week. In my defense, I have been traveling for the entire time, to Berlin and a few cities in Poland, in what now seems a confused blur of night trains and buses. And in any case, I think my comments are universal enough that they’re worth making even if the debate is starting to die down.
I have relatively little to say about the paper itself, which was submitted last week but is not yet published. Very briefly, the paper discusses a series of particle collisions seen by the CDF detector at the Tevatron Collider at Fermilab that appear to possibly contain muons which decayed from a very long-lived unknown particle — or maybe there’s a less dramatic explanation, and nobody’s figured it out yet exactly. If you haven’t heard about this at all, I strongly recommend you go to Cosmic Variance for a more substantial summary. One very big debate on the paper is whether it ought to have been submitted for publication in its present form; many experts who I know personally say that CDF should have been more careful in investigating the possible sources of the signal before publishing, and much of the CDF collaboration (including my colleagues at Berkeley) chose to take their names off of the paper’s author list. The counter-argument, which won the day in the collaboration’s final decision, is that everything that could be done had been done, and that it was time to send the work out to the wider particle physics community to see if the signal could be understood and duplicated by other experiments.
A second “debate” is much more disturbing, centering on speculation that a group of theorists had written a new theory based on inside information from the paper before it was published. When the group denied this, Tommaso Dorigo (who works on CDF and CMS) accused them point-blank of lying. The exchange, originally in blog comments, is summarized here by Dr. Dorigo. Although he qualifies his accusation a bit, he seems to stand by it and even reiterates it in the process of apologizing.
This kind of in-your-face accusation goes beyond the appropriate boundaries of professional discourse. It seems to stem the bizarrely-prevalent idea that being really obnoxious in public is normal, as long as it’s on the Internet. Would you, dear reader, put up a poster calling your boss an idiot, or give a newspaper interview in which you speculate that one of your coworkers is a liar? No, you wouldn’t! And nothing changes because our job happens to be physics, or the venue happens to be the World Wide Web. Of course we all have the right to free speech, but what we choose to say has consequences; others have the right to choose whether or not to collaborate with me, whether at the personal level or the level of a large-scale experiment, and one thing they can and will think about is whether I’m going to publicly insult them.
One of the theory paper authors, Professor Nima Arkani-Hamed, wrote a several part response to these accusations, but one part of his comment really struck me. It was about the physics blogosphere as a whole: he called it “brown muck” and said that he has “a very dim view of the physics blogosphere, and avoid[s] interacting with it.” Upon reflection, this is a fair comment. Many — though by no means all — of the physics blogs seem to spend a disturbing amount of time on personal “clashes” between “epic” personalities. The ultimate example of this is found in the insults exchanged between Peter Woit and Lubos Motl, each of whom command large opposing followings (at least on the Internet) in the so-called “String Wars.” The problem is that their extreme viewpoints and aggressive tactics don’t reflect what most physicists think about the issues; their drama, like these latest accusations about the ghost muons, is largely manufactured for consumption by the blogosphere.
I would like to think that the US/LHC Blogs offer a different vision, one that falls outside of Dr. Arkani-Hamed’s criticism. We are, first and foremost, an outreach site. We seek to explain the excitement of our work — the wonder of the Laws of Nature we’re trying to investigate, and the fantastic machines that we use for that investigation. Of course we tell you about our lives in the process, to give you an understanding of what our work really involves. We want to explain what our work means to you and why it’s worth your tax dollars, and we want to get young people excited about learning and maybe getting into careers in science. Of course we also have interpersonal conflicts, nasty suspicions, and hallway rumors — just like anybody does — but in my opinion we’re not here to tell you about that stuff for two reasons: first, because all that nonsense is not what’s essential or exciting about our work, and second, because we owe our colleagues (and potential colleagues) the courtesy of not being rude to them in public.
I hope those of you who read our blog are looking for the stories that we think are important to tell; if not, sadly, it appears that you have a wealth of alternatives to choose from. But I have been wondering about something, and in the words of Tommaso Dorigo, “I should like to open a poll for those heroic readers who came to the bottom of this post.” Do you think all this infighting is valuable to know about? Does it help the overall cause of expanding interest in, and knowledge about, our work? (In fairness, Dorigo, Motl, and Woit are also known for writing very informative posts about subjects within their expertise.) Or does the partisan warfare and discourtesy simply serve to distract readers seeking real knowledge?
You know my opinion on those questions, but I’d like to hear yours. Until then, I’ll leave you with the words of Nima Arkani-Hamed: “I’m sure you’ll agree that there is more critical physics to do than there are hours in the day to do it, and I for one would like to get back to work.”
Tags: collaboration, culture, discoveries, internet, publicity, theorists, WWW
Hear, hear! Thanks for saying out loud what many of us are thinking.
I, too, envision a future in which web sites like yours, and good science podcasts, et cetera, provide interesting content for laypeople – and showcase our better nature. Common human decency should prevail, and this includes being polite to our colleagues (even people we don’t like!) in public. The science is awesome enough that we can delight the general public with our outreach skill without resorting to manufactured drama.
Keep up the great work.
Nice post, Seth. I agree completely. Aside from putting an unpleasant public face on physics and physicists, I think the “brown muck” did distract from the real physics here. I’m guessing very few of the people who learned about this paper from blog posts came away with a reasonable estimate of the likely importance of this result and its likelihood of being new physics. (Which I think is negligible, and even the most optimistic of us would surely say is slim at best.)
I think it is interesting to know that there are so many opposing camps within the community. This IS interesting to an outsider. I disagree with your view that most blogs out there focus on these conflicts – they dont. While some people may have a heavy-handed approach of trying to gain control over the whole process, they do so fully knowing the risks these accusations entail. At least, both sides had the decency to publish their opinions in full public view. I respect them for that.
That said, it really peeves me off that an eminent physicist such as Arkani-Hamed would disapprove of physics blogs. For the lay person trying to understand the latest news and ideas in the physics community, these blogs are very very helpful. At the IAS, Prof. Hamed may or may not have his research funded by the general public, but most of the physics community does. To publish blogs like this is to return the favor.
Misplaced comments like those are the principal reason why most lay people think scientists are arrogant, even if they are not. I’m an engineer myself. Prof. Hamed would do well to ensure that the general public knows whats happening in physics beyond the occassional public lecture (TED, PI, etc).
Hi Thor,
The trouble is that, if your main source of information is blogs, you would infer the existence of large “opposing camps” in the physics community that actually don’t exist. Physics bloggers and blog-commenters form a sample that has been self-selected for its passionate opinions.
Regarding your concerns on Prof. Arkani-Hamed, I think you’re reading far too much into his remarks. He was not very specific about his concerns on the blogosphere, but I don’t think he was opposing the idea of giving back by telling the public about our work.
# This kind of in-your-face accusation goes beyond the appropriate boundaries of professional discourse.
I agree totally.
But this is more than a problem with blogs, it is more related, in my opinion, to the fact that physics is the only professional industry which is not regulated. Physicists do not even take an ethics course during their long education.
I’ve written that no lawyer can call another lawyer a crook publicly without being disbarred. Not only that, a lawyer cannot claim publicly to be a better lawyer than another lawyer. These basic professional code of behavior is lacking in physics. Physicists have been calling each crackpots freely. I am as much curious as you about what makes people to get so excited about academic issues that are mostly, well, academic issues.
Dear Seth,
of course I stand by my idea… And you should not confuse the fact that the internet allows anonymity and the typing behind a screen with the fact that we are real people with real opinions. Now, some of us will rather die than tell what they really think. I belong to a different kind. It may put me in trouble and it has in the past, but having a blog and not having the guts to say what you think is a rather meaningless occupation, regardless of your success as a science outreach supporter. The “you” above is impersonal, and I hope it does not apply to you.
I asked my readers to tell me what they thought of the matter after seeing that the authors of the phenomenological papers were all denying strongly they had gotten any wind of the CDF results. Well, I will be sincere with you: I thought there were more who shared my view, or who would say so. Still, I not only am not alone, but my opinion is shared by several people who know hep inside out. This does not mean I cannot be wrong: in fact, I may well be. Still, I will take exception on one thing: I did not call anybody a liar. I said I did not believe that none of them had had prior knowledge of the CDF result, they denied, I insisted in saying publicly I was not convinced. That, to me, is quite different from calling somebody a liar “in their face” as you say. Not all of the authors have replied, so the possibility still exists that one of them got information and never said he or she didn’t.
Cheers,
T.
Dear Seth,
I agree with you it is a very bad idea to hold science hostage to personal accusations and stereotypes, and the Reference Frame is arguably the only well-known physics blog where physics is ahead of personal issues. Sorry, I don’t know whether it’s the case here because you just happened to discuss ad hominem issues. At any rate, the US LHC Blog is not a well-known physics blog so there’s no genuine need to judge you here.
But I do disagree with other things you say. For example, it would be wrong for the CDF dimuon paper to face higher standards of verification than other papers just because the propositions sound surprising.
The signal may turn out to be wrong or have a naive explanation. The paper may be incorrect. But trying to hide what they’re getting for such a long time just because it sounds unusual would violate the neutrality of the scientific research. Results of both signs must be published after they can survive the same degree of verification.
But of course, sometimes one paper is not enough to be sure about an extraordinary statement. Extraordinary statements require extraordinary evidence but each piece of evidence must be collected and published according to blind, objective rules that do not try to foresee the implications and/or introduce a bias according to these implications.
Also, I think that Nima and myself have pretty much the same opinion on why most of the physics blogosphere is worthless. And sorry to inform you, but your writing a vacuous politically correct article like this one – with links to other politically correct sources – doesn’t make this blog valuable because the value is not the same thing as political correctness.
One comment about Zeynel’s bizarre comparisons with the law. The lawyers do not follow the rules of science because they are no scientists. They are just lawyers and the “truth” they try to find and defend is not objective truth but a set of man-made conventions. They are ultimately judged not by experiments or rigorous logical arguments but by the agreement with other people.
In science, it is extremely important to know what is right and what is wrong, whether someone likes it or not. Attempts to prevent scientists from saying – or even thinking (?) and knowing (?) – that e.g. Lee Smolin is a crackpot would violate the basic preconditions for neutral science and they would return us before the scientific revolution – when Galileo Galilei also had a lot of problems (even legal problems) merely for pointing out that the religious fundamentalist astronomers were hacks, a fact that no sensible person doubts today.
You know, crackpots may fool uneducated people into thinking that they’re something more than they are. They can even ignite religious and ideological pogroms in which the stupid people denounce the scientists and science. But they can’t fool Nature – or the physicists who understand Her.
In fact, I think that your attempts to “regulate” science are not only running against the basic principles of scientific integrity but they run against the very human freedom that must be guaranteed by the society even outside the realm of science.
Best wishes
Lubos
Tommaso, the conclusion of your post is very misleading:
There were four collaborators on the theory project. Three are faculty members, and all three have explicitly stated they had no prior knowledge of the CDF result. So your statement seems to hinge specifically on the fourth, graduate student Tracy R. Slatyer. Whatever you think ought to be the burden of proof for publishing musings about misconduct by professors, students must be left out of this kind of game.
(Just to be crystal clear, Professor Doug Finkbeiner specifically vouched for Slatyer, his student, in his comment. So when Tommaso writes that “not all the authors have replied,” it seems to be based on the fact that Slatyer hasn’t written a reply personally.)
Seth brings up a very good point here. Our new weapons are keyboards and shields are our laptop monitors, all going to fight the war against any and all common sense posted on the internet. I believe that articles shouldn’t be held to any other scrutiny than those of the reviewing peers, until there is the official green light for discussion if it makes it to press.
It’s not just physics. Had this happened in my field (Immunology), there would be insane outcry. We tend to play our cards close to our chest, go through rigorous ethics training, and generally know that if we engage in this kind of banter about submitted papers pre-publication that it gets chalked up to high-douchery. Having been personally scooped, it isn’t something I’d wish on any scientific discipline, let alone having an entire theory be concocted on and slammed against my data before it hits the presses. It would certainly make me think twice, thrice about any further publications and certainly never again for talking about my work in such a public medium. While the opening of the blogosphere hatch has done wonders for collaboration, cross-talk, and interdisciplinary banter towards a greater understanding of life, the universe, and everything (Systems Biology, for example), it shouldn’t mean that the scientific community can throw out its rules and turn into generic spammers that discourage the rest of the community from forming decent networks on and offline.
Ok Seth, granted, let’s leave the grad student out. But when this thing started, it was just one of them (Neal), commenting on PW’s blog, just one hour after the CDF preprint had appeared on the arxiv. So in that sense, despite Neal saying he was speaking on behalf of all (how could he possibly have consulted during the night with them, escapes me), I felt entitled to doubt. After Nima, and then Doug, pitched in, I acknowledged I might be wrong, but said I kept my opinion. Am I entitled to an opinion ? Thanks.
Lubos, surprisingly I totally agree with your statement that “The paper may be incorrect. But trying to hide what they’re getting for such a long time just because it sounds unusual would violate the neutrality of the scientific research. Results of both signs must be published after they can survive the same degree of verification.”. I am very worried
Cheers all,
T.
I started digging into the physics blogosphere about half a year ago, and right now my science folder has 30 feeds. I have never heard of this “string war”.
Of course there is opinion in blogs, and if it’s about string theory almost all physicists have theirs. That’s ok with me.
As always, 99% of everything is brown muck, but the science blogosphere is by no means any worse than any other. The nice thing about the internet is: you can choose where to look.
Benford’s law of controversy is an adage from the 1980 novel Timescape, stating:
“Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.”
Dear Tommaso,
please, you should feel highly flattered, but I don’t find anything shocking about finding a principle that the two of us may agree upon.
In fact, I believe that when you get mature and stop being a late teenager, you will also vote for Berlusconi – instead of the socialist sourballs – and advance the research of string theory – instead of behaving like a solution of Peter Woit in diet Coke.
However, let me present no estimates of the probability that your teen age will ever come to its end.
Best wishes
Lubos
1/3 of Collaboration who did not sign the paper is convinced that these ghosts are unaccounted for punchthroughs. What is the fuss about? But hugely entertaining. Go Tomasso, go!
Hey Lubos,
I am not following the so called blogosphere, but Dr. Dorigo sometimes percolates to internal CDF newsgroups with highly entertaining posts. I chanced to read those and have been thinking what is possibly wrong with the guy.
You seem to have nailed it!