So no, countless people around the world aren't wasting their lives researching particles when the answer is simply, it's whatever we say it is.
What gives you the faith that a "particle" is not a human construct? What on earth does "fundamental" even mean except being the bottom turtle we can see on the particular mountain of turtles at which we're looking.
"Countless"(?) people around the world are not researching particles. They're doing particle physics as they understand "particles". That's how it should be and particles are whatever they say they are. In that field, no measure means no reality. *Unless*, of course, you have faith in some platonic reality.
Positive materialists will disagree.
If you are saying even objective things are whatever we say they are, then this is a useless discussion. Obviously every word is defined with other words and all words are human creations. So yea in that sense, literally everything we know of is whatever we say it is. That's a pointless statement to make in response to this article or really ever.
What I am sayings is that there are many useful interpretations of what a particle "is" that allows science to progress. The theoreticians and the experimentalists use, sometimes even form, those interpretations to help them along in their work. I'm saying that they yet remain interpretations, even analogies; and it really doesn't matter whether those folks believe in an objective reality or not, good work still gets done. Maybe it's subjective in that sense, but a particle is whatever they say it is; and nothing more can be said with certainty unless you dive into philosophy.
You can measure a perturbation in a field, or a track in a bubble chamber, and call it a particle. Then you can work backwards to an "objective" representation, and a particle still becomes whatever you say it is. It's still scientific, consistent, mathematically rigorous, and in line with theory and observation, but it remains a human construct. You can't escape that. Ultimately, one is free to believe that there is some fundamental thing; and, maybe there is and maybe there isn't.
> literally everything we know of is whatever we say it is
Of course "literally everything we know of is whatever we say it is". That, precisely, is my point. It most certainly does not mean that we can just state anything as true unless it is sensible, consistent, observable and verifiable; and expect not to be challenged.
Or at least, I'm interpreting "the friends you make along the way" as the sum total of the effects of a particle on the surrounding world. Saying "the particle doesn't exist, but it has effects X, Y, and Z" is the same as "the particle exists and has effects X, Y, and Z". If a distinction is not observable, then it's meaningless to quibble over whether it's "real" or not.
(Which all just proves that my interpretation isn't the one you were using....)