The Multiworse Is Coming
> To justify substantial investments, I am told, an experiment needs a clear goal and at least a promise of breakthrough discoveries.<p>This is antithetical to science. If you're promising a breakthrough discovery, you're approaching the experiment with bias.<p>The fact that more new particles have not emerged at energy levels the LHC can produce <i>is</i> a discovery--if I'm understanding the blog post correctly[1], it's the beginnings of a disproof of naturalness in supersymmmetry. It's not as exciting as if they had discovered hundreds of new things to study, but it's equally important.<p>And that's exactly why I agree with the author: science is about finding what's <i>true</i> not about finding what's <i>exciting</i>. As a taxpayer, I think one of the most valuable things particle physics could do here is to educate people on that bias and lead by example. I get that they fear losing their funding to do science, but if you let that fear push you into pursuing exciting results over the truth, then you're not doing science anyway.<p>[1] I'm not a particle physicist--my post is about the social problem that physicists are facing, not about the physics.