Yeah! Who ya gonna believe?
The theory, or your own lyin' data!
It’s been said, “When a theorist publishes his results, no one believes them but the theorist. When an experimenter publishes a result, everybody believes it except the experimenter.” (’cuz he knows what can go wrong, you see. )
The data, taken at face value, suggest a seasonal variation in the measured decay rates. One of the suggested explanations was a seasonal variation in the fine structure constant, which governs all E-M interactions, including atomic spectral lines. Variations approaching 0.1% in its value would cause havoc in all kinds of routine measurements, not to mention capricious variation in the familiar properties of matter, which in actuality are exquisitely and reliably constant.
What about spectral lines in the Sun’s atmosphere? What is alpha when you’re ON the Sun. It’s ridiculous!
On a discussion group, I saw a comment that this result would be worth several Nobel prizes, if correct. This understates the case considerably. It would be the end of modern physics as we know it, tantamount to “yarn world” in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy ... anything goes!