The Guardian has published a list of their top 10 science stories for the year. It’s a good summary of some of the major advances in science that took place this year, but only if you look past the sensationalism and focus on the facts.

Item 2, for instance: “Flying faster than the speed of light just might be possible after all.” Probably not, though. Despite what the article says, the OPERA experiment has not been properly verified, and most physicists do not take the idea of FTL neutrinos seriously at this time.

Or item 10: “And finally, we learned that the Higgs boson really does exist.” Again, we’re not sure. To be fair, this one is decently plausible, but ATLAS and CMS have only achieved a \(\sim 3\sigma\) observation so far, and it’s entirely possible that it turns out to be nothing.