I know that it fulfills the practical purposes, and eliminates a massive range of other possibilities, but I find it irksome when anyone claims they can prove something doesn't happen or isn't there. The best that can ever be done is to prove that you did not observe it or it did not happen as anticipated.
Personally, I think the failure to take into account the effect of the ether on the phlogiston is going to skew the results. ;^)
That's true, but I'm not saying that if they don't find the Higgs, it doesn't exist. I'm saying that if they don't find the Higgs, the theory is wrong.
The danger, in fact, is not that they'll miss an existing Higgs particle, but rather the other way around: it has been said (by Chris Quigg) that the LHC will discover the Higgs whether it exists or not! If you simply erase the Higgs particle from the theory by fiat, it causes the W particles to become strongly interacting, forming a bound state (called a "technirho") that experimentally behaves very much like a Higgs particle, and which indeed plays a very similar role in breaking the electroweak symmetry.