亚历山大的“Higgs谎言”

偶然看到一本标题动人的书：The Higgs Fake – How Particle Physicists Fooled the Nobel Committee。作者不是“民科”，而是德国的一个物理学家，叫Alexander Unzicker，是国际象棋大师Wolfgang Unzicker的儿子。他开头就说，CERN关于Higgs粒子的新闻，往好的说，是玩儿文字游戏；往坏的说，就谎言了。（The news given on the 4 July 2012 CERN Press Conference was at best an abuse of language and at worst a lie.）他认为，实验说的5σ没有意义，因为问题根本不是统计的事儿，更大的危险在于系统误差，如错误的假定，计算程序错误，材料的效应，甚至还有自我欺骗，这些东西远比高斯模型者们一厢情愿想象的多。（It is not the statistical fluctuations one has to be concerned about, but the risk of systemic errors – the faulty assumptions, computer bugs, material effects, but also self-deceptions – which are never as rare as the Gaussian modelers would like them to be.）

U还说，所谓Higgs粒子的“发现”，在爱因斯坦、狄拉克和薛定谔等前辈看来，一定是荒谬的，因为他们绝不会相信这种带着几十个没有解释的参数的复杂模型能反映任何基本的东西（they have never believed such a complicated model with dozes of unexplained parameters to reflect anything fundamental）。

在U看来，粒子物理学自30年代以来就整个儿地“废”了（“a futile enterprise in its entirety”），它的范式变了，变成另一门学科了，成了高科技的游戏，与自然律几乎没一点儿关系（has undergone a paradigmatic change that has turned it into another science, or better, a high-tech sport, that has lithe to do with the laws of Nature）。尽管AndrewPickering和David Lindley已经有过类似的判断——Pickering在Constructing Quarks中就说，夸克的实在性是量子物理学家“实践”的结果；在1970年代，“新物理世界观”渗透了实验物理学的方方面面，它的未来就靠越来越新的机器。In a word, deed and financial calculation, HEP experimenterstestified that they lived in the world of new physics.

Unzicker说他没史家超脱，不忍见新一代物理学家被所谓“标准模型”的胡拼乱凑给毁了（it annoys me too much to see another generation physicist deterredby the dumb, mess patchwork called the standard model of particle physics that hides the basic problems physicists ought to deal with），所以具体地把它的问题揭发出来。它列了几条罪状：

1) the so-called standard model has grown unbelievably complicated,

2) none of the great riddles of physicst hat have persisted for a century have been solved,

3) history suggests that the current model is a dead end,

4) with their ever- more intricate experimental techniques, particle physicists are fooling themselves with alleged results,

5) scientific convictions in the community are established by blind faith in expert opinions, group-think and parroting,

6) the data analysis in its complexity cannot be overseen by anybody.

这些罪状都是“莫须有”的，可以加在任何未定的模型上面；而且，句子的表达很软弱，远不如书名那么有震撼力。其实，科学史同样告诉我们，只要没有新的模型（至少看得过去的）出来，大家宁愿在自己的范式里继续错误下去。