English

Blinding for precision scattering experiments: The MUSE approach as a case study

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability 2023-10-19 v1 Nuclear Experiment

Abstract

Human bias is capable of changing the analysis of measured data sufficiently to alter the results of an experiment. It is incumbent upon modern experiments, especially those investigating quantities considered contentious in the broader community, to blind their analysis in an effort to minimize bias. The choice of a blinding model is experiment specific, but should also aim to prevent accidental release of results before an analysis is finalized. In this paper, we discuss common threats to an unbiased analysis, as well as common quantities that can be blinded in different types of nuclear physics experiments. We use the Muon Scattering Experiment as an example, and detail the blinding scheme used therein.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2310.11469,
  title  = {Blinding for precision scattering experiments: The MUSE approach as a case study},
  author = {J. C. Bernauer and E. W. Cline and H. Atac and W. J. Briscoe and A. Christopher Ndukwe and E. J. Downie and I. P. Fernando and T. Gautam and R. Gilman and R. Goldin and M. Kohl and I. Lavrukhin and W. Lin and W. Lorenzon and P. Mohanmurthy and S. J. Nazeer and M. Nicol and T. Patel and A. Prosnyakov and R. D. Ransome and R. Ratvasky and H. Reid and P. E. Reimer and G. Ron and T. Rostomyan and O. M. Ruimi and K. Salamone and N. Sparveris and S. Strauch and D. A. Yaari},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.11469},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:53:40.766Z