Tag Archives: statistical significance
A new source of cosmic rays?
The International Space Station carries a suite of instruments conducting scientific experiments and measurements in low-Earth orbit. One of them is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), which studies antimatter particles in cosmic rays to understand how the universe has evolved … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, cosmic rays, deuterons, helium 4, helium-3, International Space Station, magnetic field, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, rigidity, statistical significance
Comments Off on A new source of cosmic rays?
The problem with rooting for science
The idea that trusting in science involves a lot of faith, instead of reason, is lost on most people. More often than not, as a science journalist, I encounter faith through extreme examples – such as the Bloch sphere (used … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Scicomm
Tagged arrow paradox, biopolitics, Bloch sphere, common English, emergent properties, expertise, faith, mathematical physics, pseudoscience, quantum superposition, reason, science communication, science journalism, Social Psychology, statistical significance, trust, uncertainty, wave function
Comments Off on The problem with rooting for science
The not-so-obvious obvious
If your job requires you to pore through a dozen or two scientific papers every month – as mine does – you’ll start to notice a few every now and then couching a somewhat well-known fact in study-speak. I don’t … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm, Science
Tagged Brian Wansink, Cornell University, data torturing, Higgs boson, Ig Nobel Prizes, incremental research, Large Hadron Collider, Marc Abrahams, modelling, ozone, p-hacking, Ronald H Coase, scientific research, statistical significance, University of Exeter
Comments Off on The not-so-obvious obvious
The nomenclature of uncertainty
Many science articles in the past year dealt with observations falling short of the evidence threshold but which have been worth writing about simply because of the desperation behind them. Has this prompted science writers to think about the language they use? Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged blackholes, Forbes, futurism, gravitational waves, headlines, high-energy physics, LIGO, nature, science journalism, Scientific American, statistical significance, The Wire, uncertainty
Comments Off on The nomenclature of uncertainty
Prospects for suspected new fundamental particle improve marginally
Although the data’s statistical significance isn’t as good as it would have to be for there to be a new ‘champagne bottle boson’ moment, it’s encouraging that the data itself isn’t vanishing. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged ATLAS detector, CMS detector, digamma resonance, diphoton events, Higgs boson, Large Hadron Collider, Standard Model of particle physics, statistical significance
Comments Off on Prospects for suspected new fundamental particle improve marginally
New LHC data has more of the same but could something be in the offing?
Run 2 results from the LHC show that QCD is scale-invariant – in keeping with the Standard Model prediction. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged ATLAS, CMS, Higgs boson, Large Hadron Collider, particle physics, scale invariance, statistical significance
Comments Off on New LHC data has more of the same but could something be in the offing?