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by panda-giddiness 1 day ago
Precision results are usually blinded, so it's not as if scientists can just rejigger the calculation if it's giving an implausible result; once the result has been unblinded, the calculation is finished. The physicists working on these experiments are therefore extremely motivated to quantify all potentially non-negligible sources of systemic error beforehand.

That said, the issue in this case is almost certainly systemic, not new physics. But I don't think you should consider the misfortune of the data-driven calculation typical; rather, it's notable specifically because of the discrepancies. Most calculations do not have such large disagreements. The lattice results, in contrast to those from the data-driven approach, all line up very nicely.

1 comments

To be fair, sometimes the blinding is a piece of duct tape over the display on a piece of fancy OTS industrial equipment. Though we needed to poke at it occasionally, so we needed a duct tape flap we could lift up every now and then rather than just a bare piece. I forget if I made ours or if C made it, but I remember our little blinding flap fondly.

(This is more common than you'd think.)