I had thought you were joking, but a Google search found

http://www.rickey.org/god-particle-found-higgs-boson-live-video-stream-announcement/

I can think of a reason why this was done. Of the fonts likely to be handy - and, naturally, scientific and technical types will consider the choice of the ideal typeface to be a secondary consideration - Comic Sans has an appearance which might suggest handprinting in chalk on a blackboard, thus setting the right emotional tone for what is a relatively informal presentation.

Obviously, a more appropriate font will need to be made available to forestall a repetition of this faux pas. There are science and math types who dig type - think of Donald Knuth's Computer Modern - so I think we'll see something appropriate added to the selection of TrueType fonts included in Linux distributions in the next little while without a need for action by the typographic community.

Of course, there may have already been the ideal font for this purpose available as a free font, but "handy" trumps "free" for busy people.

EDIT:

A brief search on Dafont suggests that the œuvre of Kimberly Geswein might be likely to include something helpful in this regard. "Set Fire to the Rain", for example, might have worked. Or "Architect's Daughter". Or "Shadow of the Day".

@Ryan Maelhorn:
The presentation was mind-numbingly formal, using terms and words that a layman would have no clue about,

The former does not follow from the latter; printers as well as physicists can "talk shop" either formally or informally. As this was a very preliminary presentation of results that weren't polished, but instead rushed to the public eye due to the significance of the discovery, I would think that the presentation was at least perceived during its planning as "informal" in some senses of the term.

With members of the Press present, on the other hand, a certain level of formality is indeed inevitable.

Comic Sans definitely has chalkboard appeal for scientists.
No smoke and mirrors (hence the bright color boxes do seem a bit wrong).
A lot of CS notoriety stems from its “funny” name.
Interesting that font choice would be noted, but not, say, the brand of the scientist’s informal attire (but perhaps on some fashion blogs?)

This CERN stuff is all hype, to justify the huge budget.
The relationship between physics and understanding the universe is such that we’ll never get there—always some new horizon.

The study of physics has made our lives sooooo much better..

That’s debatable.
But anyway, what’s quality of life got to do with media spin and the philosophy of science?

Ryan, your vision is pretty naïve. Physics is almost always a post-facto process: first there is the application, then there is someone that tries to come up with a mathematical model of it.

> Physics is almost always a post-facto process

I don't know the percentages, but in many cases the theory comes first. For example, the development of the atomic bomb in WW II was based on scientific theories that came first.

@Nick Shinn:
The relationship between physics and understanding the universe is such that we’ll never get there—always some new horizon.

That may be. But, even if it is true that we will never totally understand the Universe, how does it follow from that premise that it is not worthwhile to work so that we understand more rather than less?

It is a good thing to have computers instead of doing calculations by hand, it is a good thing to have comfortable homes with central heating, it is a good thing to have modern dentistry and other aspects of modern medicine, it is a good thing to be able to read and write.

Of course, new physics doesn't seem to be required for new technology, which is more of an engineering matter. But our current feats of engineering do rest on scientific discoveries, even if they are relatively old ones like electromagnetism for the most part.

It's true that science has made wars deadlier, and while the "green revolution" may have saved a billion lives, science can't make it possible to follow our instincts and increase the size of our population exponentially forever.

But science should be valued because of what it can do: it gives us the power of having more and better choices. It can't make sure that we will make the right choices, or that other people will make the right choices, but that is no reason to throw it away.

…how does it follow from that premise that it is not worthwhile to work so that we understand more rather than less?

Who said it did?

So, what's the problem?

If you read the news articles carefully, the eggheads know that they've found something that might be the Higgs boson—or, at least, one of the five or six different variants that people said to be on the lookout for over the past forty-eight years—but, frankly, they are not sure. It may take months—or even years—to figure that out.

But, hey: they found something novel, so why not keep it light? After all, they could be wrong and the joke would be on them for making such a big fuss about it in the first place.

So, what says "only kidding" better than Comic Sans? Sometimes, the way out is the way in.

I didn't like it because I found it hard to read, but maybe it's just the limited video resolution.

I would almost wonder whether anyone at the presentation itself even noticed. I would think that they would have been paying too much attention to the content to notice / care.

Of course, nobody would dare complain about her accent, even though it's at least as bad as the font.

hrant said:
> laymen might not consciously notice,
> but their brain does see everything.

but, of course, their brains are concerned
solely and completely with laying women.

-bowerbird

@hrant:
Why, was she on helium?

I didn't watch the one hour video yet; I saw a shorter one which had one of the other speakers; the graphics there used a different
typeface, which looked to me like one that would get general approval here. That speaker had an accent, which was obviously because his first language was German.

Which is to be expected, given the location of the CERN facility in question, the Large Hadron Collider. Complaining about their accents has no point, because they are not residents of an English-speaking country, nor are they pop singers - thus, they spend their time on their science rather than further brushing up their language skills.

@hrant:
I was just making a joke

I see no reason to take my post as a criticism of yourself; I could have understood if dumpling did that. Although it wasn't really intended as a criticism of him either, as I am not fond of political correctness, even though I believe in equality: what political correctness ends up doing is giving the legitimate concern for equal rights a bad rep.

This created some confusion in another recent thread, where my noting that Papyrus was popular, and simulation faces unpopular, due to the present climate was interpreted by one poster as a denunciation of simulation fonts on my part... in which I manfully strove to resist rising to the bait.

Accents can be an impediment to communication, even where it would be unproductive to complain about them. And, for that matter, it isn't bigotry for employers to insist that employees have the ability to use correct spelling and grammar when writing, where external communications are part of the job, even if this is a barrier to people for whom English (or whatever other language is local) is a second language. As long as reasonable allowances are made, and qualifications of this nature are not sought when not required, as an artificial means of exclusion, there should not be a problem with employers seeking what they require.

One could, legitimately, criticize English spelling, like Chinese characters, as an artificial barrier to social mobility - but a project of language reform is something one has to expect to be difficult to either initiate or bring to fruition.

I actually ran across a web page recently where Comic Sans was used in a reasonable and tasteful manner:

http://www.taiwanesedictionary.org/

…rushed to the public eye due to the significance of the discovery…

Surely they would rather have had more conclusive, more substantial results to announce.
The announcement was rushed out before the purse-wielding powers-that-be took off for their summer vacation.
CERN is desparate to save face and preserve funding during the ongoing international economic slowdown.

Soon, while everybody is still on the beach, the hard results (rather than the PR summary), which will not be quite so impressive as the hype, will be published, to little fanfare, and scientific response (hopefully there will be some really wacky theories) will start trickling in.

Hype, in my understanding, involves elevating excitement about something that isn't in itself exciting, typically through media manipulation, public relations, advertising etc. So whatever else a bunch of physicists in a lecture hall using Powerpoint to explain their discoveries to other physicists is, it doesn't seem to me hype. As to whether the thing itself is exciting, that seems to me to depend entirely on individual interest. Higgs and his colleagues theorised that in order for the standard model to remain viable there must be a field that gives mass to the particles that go through it, and on the basis of that theory predicted that a boson particle with specific properties would be found if one looked in a particular place. That's really good science: theory leading to prediction leading to experiment. And the announcement this summer is that yes, a boson was found exactly where predicted by Higgs and his colleagues, and now physicists need to determine its properties. Now, I happen to think this is exciting, and would have found an announcement of failure to find the boson exciting too, because either result has major implications for what remains our 'least incomplete' understanding of the physical universe. The fact that, after the experiment, the standard model is still looking pretty good, despite known problems with some aspects of it, is exciting to me because I find it exciting that human beings, through intelligence and ingenuity and mutual effort, have come to understand so much of the nature of physical reality. If that doesn't excite you, that's fine too: I don't think anyone is obligated to be excited by things that don't interest them. If you think its a waste of money, that's a legitimate concern, and there definitely is a debate to be had about the funding of the increasingly costly experiments at the fore edge of particle physics. I don't think one needs to denigrate the results of those experiments or characterise their publication as 'hype' in order to have that debate. I am interested in and excited by the latest CERN results and think the cost might be more than we should pay. On the other hand, as with footballer salaries, there is no guarantee that the money saved by not funding CERN would go to better or more worthy endeavours if not spent in that way.

Over here are the type lovers presenting their opinions on something typographic and here you are denouncing them? Good grief. (You can fill in the last part.)

hhp

Welcome to today's science world.

It could have happened in Texas, in the 1990's. The SSC was going to have 8 times the power of the LHC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider

The debate on whether to fund the SSC took so many years that some physicists made a t-shirt for the "superconducting slug collider." I still have a T-shirt for it, with colliding banana slugs.

T

The banana slug is the mascot of the University of California at Santa Cruz, home of the management of the Lick Observatory - an older attempt to fathom the makeup of the cosmos.

- Herb

In other words, "Some of my best friends use Comic Sans".

Just UC San Diego. The UC system consists of many universities, each with its own mascot....

I like Comic Sans myself, never understood why it is so much hated.

Think again. Highbrows have hormones too—CS just ain’t sexy enough.