Gravitational waves discovery now officially dead
From BICEP, yes. Their data was lacking. But the recent LIGO announcement is intact, though it too, needs to be confirmed by replication.
The thing about the LIGO data is that both sites, Washington and Louisiana, recorded the same data, to within 99.999%, and recorded their data 10 ms apart which is precisely the light distance between the two instruments. The authors show that these detections exceed a 5 sigma threshold for detecting the same event. Further, the structure of both sets of data match the predictions of GR so well they are able to determine the masses of the two black holes that merged and their distance.
Confirmation is required as a matter of discipline, but at a 5 sigma confidence level it's just a formality. Gravity waves have been detected and all but officially confirmed.
Here is the original paper (PDF format) submitted to
Physical Review Letters.
Edited by AZPaul3, : added original paper
Edited by AZPaul3, : title