Anomaly! Controversial phenomena in CDF data and the five sigma criterion in HEP

Tommaso Dorigo, INFN Padua

The CDF collaboration led for two decades the investigation of the high-energy frontier in the search for new physics at the highest energies until then achieved, provided by the Tevatron collider. In a recently published book the author describes how the experiment handled several unexplained phenomena found in the data, and the complex sociology of a large collaboration divided by different feelings on how to deal with those unexpected findings. The seminar will start by discussing the history of those anomalies and their resolution, and then focus on the statistical problem of defining a proper discovery level for new phenomena and on the non-trivial issues it entails.