The two Fermilab detectors, known as CDF and D-Zero, are backed up by two competing teams of physicists. Flaugher works with CDF, while Diehl works with D-Zero. With the two teams in direct competition, no collaboration is permitted and a veil of confidentiality shrouds all experiment results prior to peer review and publication. That means no pillow talk, either. The main place you hear rumors is in the cafeteria.
Some people just love to talk.
In 1996, the CDF team made a startling announcement. New data suggested that quarks might not be the fundamental constituents of matter after all. As the popular press caught wind of the news, which had the potential to change long-held theories of how matter is organized, Fermilab asked Flaugher to help field reporters' questions. She was quoted in The New York Times and Washington Post, explaining why CDF came to question whether the quark is indeed the smallest particle. One remote possibility, which would have made a shambles of the Standard Model, was that the quarks were breaking into smaller components.