I worked in particle physics for a few years, and left for another field after I realized how arbitrary and incoherent the 'standard model' is. Not only have I come to believe that the Higgs Boson is not real, I think there are also major problems with the quark model -- namely that quarks are also not real. There are deeply entrenched errors in particle physics going back to before WWII. Check out Alexander Unzicker's book 'The Higgs Fake.'
RE: A 50-years-long hunt for the Higgs boson