The 1999 physics Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft stated explicitly in his Scientifiic American article of 1980 entitled: Gauge Theories of the Forces between Elementary Particles that " the effect of the Higgs field is to provide a frame of reference in which the orientation of the isotopic-spin arrow can be determined." Furthermore, he stated "What distinquishes the arrow of the Higgs field is that it has a fixed length, established by the vacuum value of the field. The orientation of the other isotopic-spin arrows can then be measured with respect to the axis defined by the Higgs field. In this way a proton can be distinguished from a neutron."

He continued that "It might seem that the introduction of the Higgs field would spoil the gauge symmetry of the theory and thereby lead again to insoluble infinities. In actuality, however, the gauge symmetry is not destroyed but merely concealed. The symmetry specifies that all the laws of physics must remain invariant when the isotopic-spin arrow is rotated in an arbitrary way from place toplace. This implies that the absolute orientation of the arrow cannot be determined, since any experiment for measuring the orientation would have to detect some variation in a physical quantity when the arrow was rotated. With the inclusion of the Higgs field the absolute orientation of the arrow still cannot be determined because the arrow representing the Higgs field also rotates during a gauge transformation. All that can be measured is the angle between the arrow of the Higgs field and the other isotopic-spin arrows, or in other words their relative orientation."