Conjectures and Disconfirmations: Confirming the Standard Model Higgs

Abstract

One model in particular, the Standard Model Higgs, is taken to have been confirmed by the Higgs boson discovery at the LHC, even though many models are compatible with the data. Some models even provided riskier predictions and should perhaps be regarded as having been even more strongly confirmed. This paper sketches an argument demonstrating this by comparing the confirmation of the Standard Model Higgs with that of the Higgs in minimal supersymmetry. The paper then attempts to provide a way of understanding this result by modelling it as a case of eliminative induction.