WIMPing out

Econometrics, and economic statistics generally, rely heavily on the use of so-called "dummy variables".  These are used to include data that aren't themselves quantifiable (the sex of survey respondents, for example, or wars, or strikes) but still have an effect on quantitative outcomes.  There's a good Wikipedia article on the subject here. 

As a general rule you don't want too many dummy variables in an economic model -- it's more interesting and arguably more meaningful if measurable variables can be found to explain what's going on. Right now, though, there's a major and hugely expensive piece of research underway in an altogether different sphere that relies on what amounts to the biggest dummy variable in the universe: dark matter (and its cousins, dark energy and dark force).

Physicists' standard model of how the universe works is remarkably accurate (according to the physicists -- I can't make head nor tail of it),  provided you accept that about 80% of what the model assumes to exist in the universe has never actually been detected yet*.  That's the "dark" trio, and searching for evidence of its existence is now one of the holy grails of science.  The main target of the search is an entirely new (and so far, entirely imaginary) form of particle known as a WIMP -- Weakly Interactive Massive Particle.  

Some of the research into dark matter will take place at the LHC near Geneva, fresh from its apparent success in finding evidence of the Higgs boson.  But there's also a separate search using the so-called Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on the international space station. (So that's what they're doing up there -- it's not just Chris Hadfield talking to groups of Canadian schoolkids!)  A study based on the results found using the AMS has been released this week and seems to have found....well, read this article for yourself.  It doesn't sound to me as if they've actually found anything very substantial yet. 

You've got to love this quote, though:

“They’re telling us, Number 1, that this beautiful billion-dollar experiment involving scientists from around the world is working very well,” said Michael Turner, director of Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics.

That sounds like a pretty frank admission of the real purpose of releasing a rather inconclusive study in the first place.  Just keep all that lovely cash coming our way, folks, so that we can keep playing with these fantastically expensive big boys' and girls' toys for a while longer.  Well, good luck to them, I guess, but they might want to keep tabs on any cheques they're expecting from the Canadian government.  The folks in Ottawa just pulled out of an NGO doing research into the very real problem of desertification in Africa in order to save....$350,000.  If they find out about Michael Turner and his "beautiful billion dollar experiment", they'll be around next day to pull out the plug. 

* As an economist, I can't imagine I'd ever be allowed to describe a model as "accurate" if I had to assume rather than prove 80% of the results, but we'll let that pass for now.