The Evidence for the Top Quark: Objectivity and Bias in Collaborative Experimentation

by Kent W. Staley

Overview

Offering an historical and philosophical perspective on an important recent discovery in particle physics, the first evidence for the elementary particle known as the top quark, this study draws on published reports, oral histories, and internal documents. Kent Staley explores in detail the controversies and politics that surrounded the major scientific result. His book defends an objective theory of scientific evidence based on error probabilities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521174251
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/03/2011
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.79(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Origins of the third generation of matter; 2. Building a detector and a collaboration to run it; 3. Doing physics: CDF closes in on the top; 4. Writing up the evidence: The evolution of a result; 5. Run Ib: 'Observation' of the top quark, and second thoughts and 'evidence'; 6. A model of the experiment: Error statistical evidence and the top quark; 7. Bias, uncertainty, and evidence; Epilogue.

Editorial Reviews

"The discussion of the personalities, politics and funding as well as the science should make this book interesting to a diverse group of people including historians, philosophers, physicists, and well-informed nonscientists." R.L. Stearns, emeritus, Vassar College, Choice

"It should become a model of how philosophers do a case study in the history of science...The philosophy, history and sociology are fully integrated. All in all, it's a wonderful book." Craig Callender, University of California, San Diego

From the Publisher