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Higgs Discovery and the Look Elsewhere Effect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Richard Dawid
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Abstract

The discovery of the Higgs particle required a signal of 5σ significance. The rigid application of that condition is a convention that disregards more specific aspects of the given experiment. In particular, it does not account for the characteristics of the look elsewhere effect in the individual experimental context. The paper relates this aspect of data analysis to the question as to what extent theoretical reasoning should be admitted to play a role in the assessment of the significance of empirical data.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 76 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am very grateful to Bob Cousins, Luca Moretti, and a number of undisclosed reviewers for very helpful comments and suggestions. The work was in part financed by the Austrian Research Fund (FWF) project no. P22811-G17.

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