Science Compared To Religion

Via Ritholtz, Smart Planet on why it takes scientists a while to determine whether the OPERA neutrinos travelled faster than light.  This section describes why a reluctance to declare that the neutrinos actually disprove the theory of relativity doesn't stem from scientists clinging to highly valued tenets, but actually from a thorough analysis of potential errors in the data:

Faster-than-light particles don’t seem unlikely just because they are at odds with theories that physicists are loath to give up. Rather, they are at odds with huge amounts of observational and experimental data that gave rise to those theories.

Ring of debris surrounding the remnants of supernova 1987A. (Credit: NASA/ESA/P. Challis and R. Kirshner, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

For example, one of the stunning vindications of modern astrophysics involved the supernova 1987A: shortly before that star exploded in 1987, it released a burst of neutrinos precisely when models of stellar collapse predicted that it should. But if neutrinos actually move faster than light by the margin OPERA suggests, those neutrinos should have arrived at Earth four years earlier than they did.

Similarly, the theoretical refutation of the OPERA results that Nobel laureate Sheldon L. Glashow and Andrew G. Cohen have offered is that any superluminal neutrinos from CERN should have shed almost all their energy by the time they reached Gran Sasso because of a phenomenon called bremsstrahlung radiation. Bremsstrahlung is observed whenever charged particles interact with matter.

Perhaps some extenuating complexities can explain these discrepancies: maybe neutrinos from CERN and those from stars move at different velocities, and maybe superfast neutrinos may uniquely avoid radiating away their energy. But for now, the more parsimonious explanation is that the OPERA results are wrong.

What’s almost absurd, however, is to think that scientists would steer away from iconoclastic discoveries to protect their professional standing. But the career of any scientist who has the evidence to knock down pillars of his or her field isn’t ruined — it’s made.

The physicists who first prove the existence of faster-than-light particles are instantly in the history books. That credential looks pretty good to tenure committees and granting agencies. The same would be true for any climate scientist who could truly, conclusively prove that worries about climate change from industrial greenhouse gases were groundless, or for any biologist who could knock off evolution as the best explanation for living things’ traits. They wouldn’t be blackballed by their professions: they would be among the most famous scientists alive and able to name their own appointments.

Moreover, revolutions in science aren’t just good for the leaders of the revolution. The demonstrated existence of faster-than-light particles would mean that other new physics remains to be discovered, and lots of new work needs to be done to fit the older observations into the new paradigms. Those opportunities would be welcomed by legions of physicists looking to make their mark. Indeed, the OPERA results have already inspired a number of scientific papers.

Einstein’s theory of special relativity sits on a pedestal of honor, not on an altar. Plenty of physicists would be glad to knock it off and put something else in its place. But it may take something more substantial than OPERA’s superluminal neutrinos to bring it down.

The OPERA results are definitely interesting, but the potential of minor errors may disprove the results.  It will take a large number of repetitions of the results before they are accepted as correct, and by then someone may have come up with a theory to explain the situation.  Whereas religion is based on belief, not calculation.