Comment by particleguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by particleguy | Hacker News Reader

This result isn't even peer-reviewed yet. All of this hype about the X17 particle is coming from a pre-print on the arXiv.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459

They claim a 7.2 sigma result, but the distribution of the null-hypothesis (called PDF(exp) in the paper) was determined from simulations of one atomic transition and "external pair creation on the target backing", and the only source of systematic error they took into account was the position of the target relative to the beam-line. It seems a little paltry to me in terms of trying to take into account possible sources of error... And given that the excess appears in only a particular angular region, they seem to be ignoring the Look-elsewhere effect ("oh, no excess signal here? Let me look elsewhere...") and over-stating their significance. The paper also is riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes, and while that doesn't have anything to do with the science, it does say something about the sloppiness of the researcher, I think.

Anyway, I can't imagine this passing the muster of peer-review in its current state. But I'll be curious to see the revised paper with more details included (if they can actually get it published).

EDIT: They did explain how they determined the background distribution, I edited my comment above.

> The paper also is riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes, and while that doesn't have anything to do with the science, it does say something about the sloppiness of the researcher, I think.

I have reviewed many papers that were originally quite badly written, but were not bad papers at all. Many non-native speakers are bad at English, so they rely on some external editing service, and they do not want to pay this service until the paper has been properly reviewed and they have made the proposed changes. Of course it does not send a good signal, but the content of the article should not be judged in basis to that.

How many of those papers were making exceptional claims?

only researchers fluent in English can come across exceptional findings?

>> This result isn't even peer-reviewed yet.

ArXiv pre-prints are pretty normal in physics and math.

>> that doesn't have anything to do with the science, it does say something about the sloppiness of the researcher, I think.

Interesting. BTW, Krasznahorkay is a highly-cited researchers.

Seconded. We treated ArXiv pre-prints incredibly seriously and only posted things when they were already in review/scheduled to be published.

>> ArXiv pre-prints are pretty normal in physics and math.

Correct, and they are usually followed up by a published, peer-reviewed paper as well. I look forward to the day this one also gets reviewed and published.

Higgs boson discovery pre-print: https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7214 Higgs boson discovery paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037026931...

It's essentially the same text.

>> BTW, Krasznahorkay is a highly-cited researchers.

Great

Yes, they are normal... but they also aren't even peer-reviewed yet.

Ergo, you can treat it as more significant than a random physics crank posting on his blog, but not as trustworthy as something that has in fact been properly vetted.

At least in my field, there is an option during journal submission to submit your work automatically to a similar archive.

It’s actually two Krasznahorkays on this paper. I know one of them, and he’s very thorough.

CERN's NA64 experiments have been looking for a similar particle and so far haven't found it. They haven't completely ruled it out, but their results so far don't seem to support a claim that this particle has definitely been found.

https://home.cern/news/news/physics/plot-thickens-hypothetic...

Agree. This new boson business has been declared and punted on since 2015/2016. Still I hope something new breaks lose... We could use a shot in the arm.

Username checks out.

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