Summary and Conclusions

Abstract

In our final chapter we intend to show that we have made good on what we claimed in our Introduction to be the benefits of applying the notions of acceptance and pursuit to experiments and experimental programs. Thus, we will summarize and refine our findings as to how these concepts have been usefully applied in the historical cases considered. These findings include the following propositions. (1) Being worthy of pursuit does not require that an experiment be thought likely to prevail against the existing regime of accepted results. (2) An experimental result may warrant acceptance in some respects while being deemed only pursuit worthy in other respects. (3) An “exact” replication is rarely pursuit worthy (why repeat the same mistakes?) and such replication is warranted only if there exists good reason to think that a relevant causal factor has changed. More generally, what is required is a pursuit worthy reason to look for the better experiment. As a corollary, an experimental result may be deemed pursuit worthy for purposes of replication after which it may achieve acceptance or be deemed worthy of more general further pursuit. (4) Experiments performed on the experimental apparatus to determine its sensitivity to possible confounding factors are an essential part of every good experiment. In addition to providing evidence in support of either acceptance or further pursuit, such sensitivity testing is often revealing as to specific pursuit worthy avenues of improvement. (5) An experiment may warrant either acceptance or further pursuit because of the internal consistency of its interacting components. (6) Experimental results may achieve acceptance to the point that even well accepted principles such as conservation of energy and quantization lose their status as accepted, and such principles and their options are treated on an equal footing as being only pursuit worthy. (7) Experimental programs sometimes take on a life of their own even after their theoretical motivations have been abandoned, and thus continue to be pursuit worthy. (8) Experiments may sometimes be deemed not pursuit worthy even though there is no plausible explanation as to why and how they have failed. (9) In high-energy physics there is a formal criterion for the acceptance of a claimed discovery, namely, that the observed signal must be five standard deviations (5σ) above background. But the supporting statistical analysis may be challenged as only being pursuit worthy.