> In 2015, CERN’s LHCb found pentaquarks in their data with 9 sigma significance!!! This either proved that CERN can find whatever it wants in its data or it proved that the experiments which showed the pentaquark did not exist were wrong. I suspect that the former is true because I wonder what the expected probability of seeing the particle was in their application of Bayes’ theorem.
I 'm not sure that's an indictment of LHC itself or rather of the sloppy way with which science attribute importance to whatever is statistically significant. It's probably true that there is too much data and not enough good models.
> the sloppy way with which science attribute importance to whatever is statistically significant.
But we don't. Just because an effect is statistically significant doesn't mean it could not also be explained by some systematic effect and physicists are very aware of that.
The famous five sigma rule prevents a claim of discovery without statistically significant evidence. It does NOT mean that we automatically accept every five sigma deviation from the background model as new physics.
> In 2015, CERN’s LHCb found pentaquarks in their data with 9 sigma significance!!! This either proved that CERN can find whatever it wants in its data or it proved that the experiments which showed the pentaquark did not exist were wrong. I suspect that the former is true because I wonder what the expected probability of seeing the particle was in their application of Bayes’ theorem.
I 'm not sure that's an indictment of LHC itself or rather of the sloppy way with which science attribute importance to whatever is statistically significant. It's probably true that there is too much data and not enough good models.