"-oid: resembling : having the form or appearance of." Webster's Ninth New
Colegiate Dictionary.
By this definition of the suffix, a factoid may or may not be a fact. Is
Pons and Fleishmann's "Cold Fusion" a factoid? Is an interpretation of one
isolated observation a factoid? I have a friend who has a photograph of
the track of a magnetic monopole on his wall. He says, "I just have this
one example. Means nothing! Very poor statistics." Is this a factoid? I
hope not.
Observations are crucial to the advancement of science. They can be
explained and understood only in the light of some theory though. Are they
factoids before or after this explanation? Are they factoids if the theory
is refuted or the experiment cannot be reproduced?
Experimentalists are in the business of observation. Their job is to test
theories, e.g. looking for proton decay, and to observe things that have
not been predicted, e.g. neutrino mass. Their observations, when supported
by sufficient statistics, can be called "facts" (with a certain liklihood).
I think the term "factoid," in its ambiguity, should be left for
dilettantes of science.
Charles A. Crummer, PhD
LD Physics Lab. Manager
(408)459-4154
ccrummer@cats.ucsc.edu
Office: Thimann Labs 111D