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Thanks for your comments Rob and Alex.
It seems that these researchers are being cautious about it all and are not asking anyone to jump aboard with the idea of Alpha varying. There's a good chance that the value variance is probably due to some kind of experimental or systematic error in their analysis, (I reckon). When one thinks about the kind of measurement they're doing, any intervening matter and/or its movement has to be taken into consideration and compensated for across the whole dataset.
Tricky stuff, I think.
They have their critics as well, (even though Webb says he's answered them all). Perhaps they should get someone else to reproduce their results as a next step .. which would also draw some of the 'heat' away from themselves for a while. (IMO).
Actually, along the lines of Alex's last post, (although not blatently fraudulent ... as per the article he cites), I also often wonder how scientists working on something like this manage to justify their continued work on a particular topic, especially if the results of the first part turn out merely 'null' ?
Also, it must be difficult to justify the cost involved in the next logical steps in researching a finding like the fine structure constant work. Perhaps it is simpler to put the results 'out there' and see how much excitement it generates ? I mean, that's exactly what the neutrino CERN/OPERA folk just did with their FTL experiments, eh ? I wonder whether this was all a deliberate ploy to obtain funding for the second, (recently announced), FTL/neutrino run ? (They clearly have a competing experiment .. proton tests ?? ... vying for a common resource ... I wonder whether this is becoming a way for research teams to prioritise their resources/projects ... and we're likely to see a lot more of this behaviour in the future ?)
Cheers
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