A category mistake in observational claims regarding ultrashort-lived unstable particles

TL;DR

The paper argues that claims of observing ultrashort-lived particles like the Higgs boson are based on a category mistake, conflating inference with direct observation, thus overestimating empirical support for the Standard Model.

Contribution

It identifies a fundamental category mistake in particle physics claims, challenging the validity of observational assertions based on the 5σ convention.

Findings

Observational claims are actually inferences, not direct observations.

The 5σ convention leads to a category mistake in claims about particle detection.

Empirical support for the Standard Model is less robust than previously believed.

Abstract

The physics literature contains many claims that ultrashort-lived unstable particles, such as a Higgs boson, have been observed. These claims are a matter of applying the $5\sigma$-convention in particle physics. This paper, however, shows that by applying this $5\sigma$-convention a category mistake is made, by which a pure reasoning is passed off as an observation. Not only are these two fundamentally different primitive notions at the very basis of science, but the pure reasoning in question is also weaker than an observation: what we have in each case is that the existence of the ultrashort-lived unstable particle is inferred to the best explanation, but that does absolutely not merit the stronger claim that the particle in question has been "observed". Consequently, the observational claims in question will thus have to be dismissed as overstatements. On a general note, this demonstrates that the empirical support for the Standard Model of particle physics is significantly less than hitherto thought.