philosophy of physics talk at the MCMP next friday

[Karim Thebault]

*November 30th:*

Ludwigstr. 31 <http://goo.gl/maps/8Q2IJ> /II room 225****

Time: 12 to 2 p.m.                          Talk: Richard Dawid/Vienna

*Evidence for the Higgs Particle and the Look Elsewhere Effect*

* *

Last summer CERN reported the observation of a scalar particle that is strongly
believed to be the long expected Higgs particle. One specific aspect of the
process of data collection and analysis that led up to this discovery is of
specific philosophical interest. In the early months of 2012, when the
collected data was already significant but technically did not yet amount
to an observation of a new particle (i. e. did not yet constitute a 5 sigma
effect), an interesting debate on the most adequate characterisation of the
status of the available data arose among particle physicists. That debate
circled around the role of the so called ‘look elsewhere effect’ and
provided an interesting perspective on the relation between theoretical and
empirical arguments in high energy physics. The talk will analyse this
debate and draw some conclusions regarding the epistemic status of claims
in high energy physics.


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Karim Thébault, MCMP<http://www.mcmp.philosophie.uni-muenchen.de/index.html>
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