Re: Gee G-2 is wrong!

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>]

At 9:13 AM -0700 2/13/01, Roger Haar wrote:
> Hi,
>         Although this may be true, they did submit a Phys
> Rev Letter on it at the same time.  So this is not
> just a case of physics by PR.

Nowhere in that PRL were comments made as exaggerated as those in the
press release. They would have been squashed by the referees. In their
abstract they say "This difference may be due to physics beyond the
standard model". In the paper they say:

   Many speculative theories predict deviations from the standard
   model value for[(g-2)/2]. These include super-symmetry, muon
   substructure, and anomalous W couplings. The muon anomalous g
   value is particularly sensitive to supersymmetry  whose
   contributions to [(g-2)/2] come from smuon-neutralino and
   sneutrino-chargino loops. In the limit of large tan [beta],
   which is the ratio of the vacuum expectation values of two
   Higgs doublets, and for a degenerate spectrum of superparticles ...

It is quite clear that this would not do for a press release, so
without the inhibitory influence of referees, they jazzed it up - a
lot! Now I don't want to pretend that I understand any of the selection
I have included above. I think I do understand the experiment, however
(the paper itself is well enough written that even a nonspecialist can
understand a lot of it) and it is my opinion that it does not justify
the exaggerated claims being trumpeted in the press, e.g. that it opens
the first window on all the glorious physics beyond the standard model.

Leigh