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

Description

The Evidence for the Top Quark offers both a historical and philosophical perspective on an important recent discovery in particle physics: the first evidence for the elementary particle known as the top quark. Drawing on published reports, oral histories, and internal documents from the large collaboration that performed the experiment, Kent Staley explores in detail the controversies and politics that surrounded this major scientific result. At the same time the book seeks to defend an objective theory of scientific evidence based on error probabilities. Such a theory provides an illuminating explication of the points of contention in the debate over the evidence for the top quark. Philosophers wishing to defend the objectivity of the results of scientific research must face unflinchingly the realities of scientific practice, and this book attempts to do precisely that.

'... a significant contribution to the history and philosophy of both experiment and science.' Allen Franklin, University of Colorado at Boulder, author of The Neglect of Experiment '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