ブログ・いとしきもの　A lullaby for myself

2012/4/17（火）
昨日は曇り。仕事で身体を動かすには適した気温。リンゴの接ぎ木実験。詳細はこちら：

　 02F12_接木に挑戦（2）のページの接木実験の項へ

。ポット苗を屋外に出した。苗堀上げ。冬眠からさめたばかりなのか、白っぽく変色した雨蛙がポットから飛び出してきた。デジカメに納めようとファインダーを向けたがぴょこぴょこ跳ねてなかなかシャッターを押せない。ともかく何とか撮影できた。「ニュートリノが光より早いという」ニュースの続編で、それが間違いだと分かった。更に、そのニュースの続編として研究グループのリーダーが辞任したというニュースがあった。どこの世界でも辞任で問題が完全に解決するわけではないだろうが、何かしなければ片が付かないと言うことか。

2012/4/16（月）の天気

Q
Q

科学ニュースに独り言：巨大科学のリーダーに邪心は無用か

「ニュートリノが光より早いという」ニュースにわくわくしたものを感じた。この世界の現象を突き詰めて行くとき、「光より早く伝わるものはない」というスピードの上限があることに何となく限界感も感じる。この基本原則があてはまらない現象があれば、今まで科学で説明できないことも説明できるのではと期待感が高まったのも事実だろう。

Nature News Blogは、「Leaders of faster-than-light neutrino team resign；url=http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/03/leaders-of-faster-than-light-neutrino-team-resign.html（30 Mar 2012 | 15:54 BST | Posted by Eugenie Samuel Reich | Category: Physics & Mathematics, Policy ）」というタイトルで、以下の通り報じた。

以下、Nature News Blogからの引用。
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「A month after revealing errors in their high-profile claim that subatomic neutrinos had been clocked traveling faster than the speed of light, two leaders of the Italian OPERA collaboration have resigned. Both spokesman Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern in Switzerland and physics coordinator Dario Autiero of Lyon’s Institute of Nuclear Physics in France, who presented the stunning result in September 2011 to a packed auditorium at CERN (pictured), sent out resignations today.

Autiero says that both men have been concerned about the existence of a large split within OPERA’s 170-strong collaboration, and want to make way for an alternative leadership that can provide more unity. Ereditato, reached by phone, says firmly, “my comment is no comment.”

OPERA had clocked neutrinos traveling 730 kilometres from CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, to Gran Sasso National Laboratory near L’Aquila, Italy, finding that they arrived 60 nanoseconds faster than a light beam would do. This seemed to conflict with Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, which bans faster-than-light travel. But a subsequent investigation of the experiment’s systematics revealed a troublesome cable and timing device that cast doubt on the certainty of the result. OPERA still plans to repeat its measurement in May with the goal of quantifying the effect of its errors.

Autiero denied that he was stepping down because of mistakes in the measurement, saying that the discovery of an unknown systematic error is an inevitable hazard for any scientist doing a precision measurement. “In science you cannot pretend to be the owner of any absolute truth,” he says. Instead, he says that he and Ereditato felt that tensions that had always existed within OPERA were becoming impossible to bridge. He acknowledges that these were exacerbated by the publication of the provocative result, with some complaining from the beginning that the findings were likely to be wrong. He also agrees that the spectacular degree of media attention has brought pressure to bear. Despite the fact that OPERA itself never claimed to overturn Einstein’s theory, keeping its claims narrowly to the report of an anomalous measurement, many newspapers depicted it that way. ‘They played with the sensationalism of the story,” he says.

Yves Declais, also of Lyon’s Institute of Nuclear Physics in France, who was spokesman of OPERA from 2002 to 2008, says that OPERA has always been difficult to lead. There are cultural splits between the Italians and Northern Europeans, and a lot of personality conflicts that make it hard to have a quiet scientific discussion, he says. He believes that part of the problem is that the leaders are elected by a collaboration board of 20--30 people, consisting of one person from each participating institution, and not by the whole collaboration, so many do not feel it is truly representative.
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以上　引用終わり

タイトルは「ニュートリノが光より早いという実験結果を出した研究チームのリーダーが辞任Leaders of faster-than-light neutrino team resign」という意味だろう。実験結果が間違っていたから辞任でもなさそうだ。実験結果の評価と検証が甘かったという点は結果として明らかになったようだ。物理学の基本原理を証明する実験データの精度と再現性も甘かったようだ。個々の実験をいくら正確にしても、他の実験との整合性が説明できない基本的問題があったが、「新発見」と功をあせったというのが、自分の邪推であった。研究チームのリーダーが辞任して片が付く問題でもなかろう。上記の記事によれば、巨大な科学研究チームも人間が作った組織に過ぎず、そこに派閥や学閥や地域閥的集団要素が紛れ込んで、複雑なグループダイナミックスが働いているようにも見える。辞任という事を裏から見ると、グループ間の足の引っ張り合いと言うことなのか。巨大な科学研究組織を指揮するにも、またそれなりの資質と能力が要求されるようだ。