Head of 'faster-than-light' neutrinos team resigns

Scientists make mistakes all the time. At least he was very humble about it and never claimed anything more than what he observed.

I think he should "offer" his resignation, but it should not be accepted.
 
mercurial said:
Hands up, who thinks he was asked to step down?

/raises hand
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+1

People make mistakes, and obviously they never claimed anything. That's what science is, someone discovers something and others recreate/confirm these. no need to step down, poor dude
 
I don't see why he should resign. They even said they need independent confirmation to verify their results. Imagine if they were correct?
 
OrbitalDawn said:
Why are you all assuming it's because of the contentious "faster-than-light" experiments? As far as I can see, the article just says he resigned, not why.
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History is filled with people that resign after making mistakes. This is science. This shyte is serious. They were extremely embarrassed with the error this guy made and they obviously feel that he is not fit to continue his role. Either that or he just felt so embarrassed/ashamed/sad and decided to resign.
 
To announce a result of such earth-shattering magnitude without checking everything umpteen times and properly is a clear and gross dereliction of his duty. Whether he jumped or was pushed is irrelevant. He deserved to go for undermining the credibility of the entire team.
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I think there are a lot of people here who never read the original scientific announcement. You need to go back and see just how cautious they were.
 
I remember how cautious they were. Still doesn't excuse it. If you get a truly bizarre result you have an added responsibility to check everything. Which they didn't. And nobody forced them to announce anything. He, as team lead, chose to announce.
This kind of thing gives science a bad name.
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eXisor said:
I remember how cautious they were. Still doesn't excuse it. If you get a truly bizarre result you have an added responsibility to check everything. Which they didn't. And nobody forced them to announce anything. He, as team lead, chose to announce.
This kind of thing gives science a bad name.
.
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In hindsight it would have been prudent for him to privately have requested a peer review prior to going public.
 
bekdik said:
In hindsight it would have been prudent for him to privately have requested a peer review prior to going public.
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From the sounds of it many within the team did not agree with releasing the result. That's what's behind the no confidence vote that he survived a few days ago.

This article http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1df480d5/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Carticle0Cdn216560Eleaders0Eof0Econtroversial0Eneutrino0Eexperiment0Estep0Edown0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm has more.
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mercurial said:
History is filled with people that resign after making mistakes. This is science. This shyte is serious. They were extremely embarrassed with the error this guy made and they obviously feel that he is not fit to continue his role. Either that or he just felt so embarrassed/ashamed/sad and decided to resign.
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It's not so much about the error, but how it was handled. They should have verified the results first, but could resist the publicity.

Making mistakes is normal. Very often understanding why you made a a mistake is what leads to success further on. It's part of the process of discovery. Checking and re-checking is also part if the process.

In science there is a level of confidence you are supposed to attain regarding these kinds of experiments. And there are clear processes to achieve this. They ignored these.
 
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zippy said:
It's not so much about the error, but how it was handled. They should have verified the results first, but could resist the publicity.

Making mistakes is normal. Very often understanding why you made a a mistake is what leads to success further on. It's part of the process of discovery. Checking and re-checking is also part if the process.

In science there is a level of confidence you are supposed to attain regarding these kinds of experiments. And there are clear processes to achieve this. They ignored these.
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Well, that was their error - the fact that they did not handle it properly.
 
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