Oh .. and from the other critic's (Sean Carroll's) web blog:
Quote:
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That’s why theorists are skeptical of this claimed result. Not that it’s impossible; if the data stand up, it will present a serious challenge to our theoretical prejudices, but that will doubtless goad theorists into being more clever than usual in trying to explain it. Rather, the point is that we have good reasons to suspect that the fine structure constant really is constant; it’s not just a fifty-fifty kind of choice. And given those good reasons, we need really good data to change our minds. That’s not what we have yet — but what we have is certainly more than enough motivation to keep searching.
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His approach is to view the Fine Structure Constant as a scalar field (physics-speak for a quantity which takes on a unique numerical value at every point in spacetime).
I expect we'll hear a lot more on this.
Cheers