News reports about this “discovery” were often expressed with qualifications, and interviewed experts often refused to put their reputations on the line by bluntly saying, “Yes, this is the Higgs particle.”
I also thought the emotional response of the Physics community was subdued.
I'll guess that when the quark was confirmed in 1968, there was real jubilation and many physicists were thrilled.
The fact that it cost $6 billion to build the LHC, and another $1 billion each year to run and maintain it, might be a powerful incentive to mislead the public about what exactly was discovered.
It’s all about the hunt for a Nobel Prize.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/
There were earlier attempts to find the Higgs, all failed, and the results of the LHC were not really in accord with expectations. But that’s okay too, if we already knew everything, there’d be nothin’ to do.