LIGO's detection of GWR and "the VETO"

LIGO - Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory - made headlines a year ago with its announcement of the detection of gravitational-wave radiation from the merger of two stellar-mass black holes (link to the February 11, 2016 LIGO PR).

I recently came across a truly extraordinary claim, made in the Thunderdolts forum (no, I'm not going to provide a link; Google will find the source easily enough), part of which is: "LIGO is another dishonest example of that "sigma" manipulation routine in action. The LIGO team originally received a *VETO* on their original signal. They later chose to override that VETO, they then intentionally lied in their published paper by falsely claiming there was no veto within an hour of the signal, and they claimed it couldn't possibly be anything but a gravity wave [sic]. Those actions of omitting any information about the original VETO and claiming that there was no VETO literally crosses the line into the realm of gross professional misconduct."

Does anyone know what this is about? Specifically the "veto" ("VETO", "*VETO*") ... what is it? how does it work?

JeanTate said:

LIGO - Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory - made headlines a year ago with its announcement of the detection of gravitational-wave radiation from the merger of two stellar-mass black holes (link to the February 11, 2016 LIGO PR).

I recently came across a truly extraordinary claim, made in the Thunderdolts forum (no, I'm not going to provide a link; Google will find the source easily enough), part of which is: "LIGO is another dishonest example of that "sigma" manipulation routine in action. The LIGO team originally received a *VETO* on their original signal. They later chose to override that VETO, they then intentionally lied in their published paper by falsely claiming there was no veto within an hour of the signal, and they claimed it couldn't possibly be anything but a gravity wave [sic]. Those actions of omitting any information about the original VETO and claiming that there was no VETO literally crosses the line into the realm of gross professional misconduct."

Does anyone know what this is about? Specifically the "veto" ("VETO", "*VETO*") ... what is it? how does it work?

Click to expand...

<sarcasm>Are you telling me that someone posted a claim on thunderdolts, and didn't provide a link to back up their claim? I find that hard to believe!</sarcasm>

Actually, I'm guessing that this is the document you would need:
https://dcc.ligo.org/LIGO-T1600011/public

I have made no attempt to analyse it, as others would be far better qualified to do so.

There's also this, Section 4:

https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0122/P1500238/024/P1500238_GW150914_noise_characterization.pdf

JeanTate said:

LIGO - Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory - made headlines a year ago with its announcement of the detection of gravitational-wave radiation from the merger of two stellar-mass black holes (link to the February 11, 2016 LIGO PR).

I recently came across a truly extraordinary claim, made in the Thunderdolts forum (no, I'm not going to provide a link; Google will find the source easily enough), part of which is: "LIGO is another dishonest example of that "sigma" manipulation routine in action. The LIGO team originally received a *VETO* on their original signal. They later chose to override that VETO, they then intentionally lied in their published paper by falsely claiming there was no veto within an hour of the signal, and they claimed it couldn't possibly be anything but a gravity wave [sic]. Those actions of omitting any information about the original VETO and claiming that there was no VETO literally crosses the line into the realm of gross professional misconduct."

Does anyone know what this is about? Specifically the "veto" ("VETO", "*VETO*") ... what is it? how does it work?

Click to expand...

Hi JT;

I had a lengthy 'debate' with a well-known (misinformed) mutual 'acquaintance' of ours when I (unfortunately) linked to the source LIGO magazine article in a discussion with him. (Which appeared to start all this nonsense on another forum which he continually plagues).

Whilst the LIGO team seems to have provided little subsequent direct clarification on the matter, from my own research, it appears that 'the Veto' referred to by Tbolters was designed to avoid despatching unnecessary alerts to the 'downstream' LIGO partners, which would otherwise require them to divert resources in doing immediate 'follow-up' observations. At the time, our 'mutual acquaintance' decided, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, that the Veto had been rigorously tested, and was thus absolutely reliable. It was not. The Veto chain in question had apparently not yet transitioned from the 'Engineering test' mode into fully fledged 'Observation' mode and so they removed it, thus enabling downstream observations, by the partners, of what appeared to be a perfectly valid signal detection.

At the time of our 'debate', our 'acquaintance' also decided to conflate the reporting chain 'veto' process as being one in the same as the real-time automated data analysis veto process. I am not convinced they are one-in-the-same, (as is evidenced by the fact that the LIGO team continued with their analysis of the data at hand).

I'd have to dig up all my (months old) personal research info which lead me to conclude that there appears to be two separate 'veto' processes referred to by LIGO and the one referred to in the LIGO magazine was within the Operations context, ie: alarm notification to downstream partners .. as opposed to the signal data investigation/analysis context.

As far as 'gross professional misconduct' goes, the only person demonstrating 'gross misconduct' is our well-known, misinformed, anti-science and previously banned around most web forums, 'mutual acquaintance'.

Cheers

Over the period of our 'debate' on the topic at the time - (March last year?), I read through most of the relevant papers from Christopher Berry's blog site here. The papers summarise the broader (and more complex) 'big picture' which lead the LIGO team analysis/thinking at the time.

Hope these help.

Cheers

The misunderstood article is here (Alert: its a pretty big download). I have quoted the relevant section below:

Urban said:

LLO – September 14, 2015, 09:53:51 UTC – Alex Urban, Reed Essick:

The Coherent WaveBurst (cWB) data analysis algorithm detected GW150914. An entry was recorded in the central transient event database (GraceDB), triggering a slew of automated follow-up procedures. Within three seconds, asynchronous automated data quality (iDQ) glitch-detection follow-up processes began reporting results. Fourteen seconds after cWB uploaded the candidate, iDQ processes at LLO reported with high confidence that the event was due to a glitch. The event was labeled as “rejected” 4 seconds afterward. Automated alerts ceased.

Processing continued, however. Within five minutes of detection, we knew there were no gamma-ray bursts reported near the time of the event. Within 15 minutes, the first sky map was available.

At 11:23:20 UTC, an analyst follow-up determined which auxiliary channels were associated with iDQ’s decision. It became clear that these were un-calibrated versions of h(t) which had not been flagged as “unsafe” and were only added to the set of available low latency channels after the start of ER8. Based on the safety of the channels, the Data Quality Veto label was removed within 2.5 hours and analyses proceeded after re- starting by hand.

Click to expand...

Bottom line was that the Veto was deemed as being not safe .. so it was removed which allowed notification of, and subsequent follow-up by, the partner chain.

SelfSim said:

Bottom line was that the Veto was deemed as being not safe .. so it was removed which allowed notification of, and subsequent follow-up by, the partner chain.

Click to expand...

The former member makes no mention that the data filtering algorithms are imperfect and yield both rejects and accepts are subjected to further human review. The filters just help the researchers give priority to signals with greater likelihood of being genuine. Our friend also doesn't mention the many necessary tests a signal must pass including detection of the same waveform by the sister location within the the time window for light speed propagation.

In other areas of endeavor our friend's remarks could result in libel charges; he's lucky scientists have better things to do.

ferd burfle said:

The former member makes no mention that the data filtering algorithms are imperfect and yield both rejects and accepts are subjected to further human review. The filters just help the researchers give priority to signals with greater likelihood of being genuine. Our friend also doesn't mention the many necessary tests a signal must pass including detection of the same waveform by the sister location within the the time window for light speed propagation.

Click to expand...

Agreed ...
As I recall from our past 'debate', he completely failed to recognise the implications of what you mention. In fact, he'd convinced himself that either an equipment glitch or a local geomagnetic disturbance caused a signal with a signal-to-noise ratio of approx 24 dB! This then led him to believe that the over-riding of the veto was part of a conspiracy to cover up 'what must have caused it'.

I found a LIGO team procedures document entitled: "Low-latency LIGO-Virgo Alerts" .. which just happens to have been authored by the same person, (Reed Essick), who co-authored the section in the LIGO Magazine which mentioned the over-riding of the veto (which I quoted in my previous post). In the procedure presentation (linked above), it shows the flow-chart of what is supposed to happen during the early stages of any detections. It clearly calls for human input (just as you mention).

In other words, they were following their own operational procedure perfectly .. (just as they should have been).

ferd burfle said:

In other areas of endeavor our friend's remarks could result in libel charges; he's lucky scientists have better things to do.

Click to expand...

In fact he ended up being suspended from the other forum for his libellous insults directed at the respected science blogger, Brian Koberlein, (whom he also bluntly accused of being part of his broader conspiracy - I think 'Reality Check' from JRef will back me up on that .. he was directly involved in the campaign also).

Thanks everyone, especially SelfSim. The Christopher Berry blog is really good; I had not known of it before. And I'd like to repeat the link you gave, because it's to his February 2016 blog post, entitled GW150914—The papers and is really helpful in terms of a good overview of the actual papers.

I also found (I think) the "lengthy 'debate'" you mentioned; OMG!

Re "The misunderstood article is here (Alert: its a pretty big download)": it's the LIGO Magazine, issue 8 3/2016; its title is "First detection!". A really good read!

There's a lot to take in if you come at this topic "cold", not least the incredible amount of detail and the large number of terms which have somewhat more narrow technical meanings than their everyday English ones.

(to be continued)

I'm going to put the tl;dr first: I think the truly extraordinary claim I quoted in the OP has little to do with science. It's essentially a conspiracy theory. So perhaps this thread should be moved to the appropriate section of ISF.

First some background:

• as far as I can tell, the only person who has made this claim is Michael Mozina (MM)
• MM was an ISF (JREF) member for quite a while, and an active one
• however, he was banned, and has been banned in many science forums¹
• it is, I think, not quite OK to quote banned members (beyond what they've posted here in ISF); however I hope it's OK for something as important as the LIGO discovery of GWR
• there's a >500 post thread (now closed) in Christian Forums (CRUS) which contains details of MM's claims, "We have detected gravitational waves. We did it."
• it is from my careful reading of that thread, together with the sources cited therein and also in this thread so far, that I came to my conclusion (above).

Taking each claim in turn (indented, in blue):


What ""sigma" manipulation routine"? As far as I can tell, it's a term MM himself coined. From what's posted in the CRUS thread, I don't really understand it, beyond a top-level grok that it's a rather extreme misunderstanding or misinterpretation of estimation of uncertainty ("error bars"). In physics, astronomy, ...


LIGO is an extremely complex experiment/instrument/observatory. The data which includes what later became known as the GW150914 signal certainly includes a "veto", many in fact. Of several different kinds. As already noted in this thread by SelfSim and ferd burfle (and in the sources cited).


Yes (though if you, dear reader, choose to investigate this for yourself, I recommend you take the time to determine which veto was overridden, how, and by whom; also what kind of veto it was).


No. As has already been noted in this thread, there are several different kinds of LIGO "veto"; what's in the published papers (there are, what, 15?) is correct.


No. I might go into some detail later on how, and in how many ways, this is just soooo wrong.


This become moot, if only by the two preceding "no"s.

If you're going to read the CRUS thread yourself, it might save you some time to know that the LIGO Magazine issue (link above) which seemed to be spark MM's claims is in post #397, in mid-May (2016). Late in the thread (post #482) a new participant entered the discussion, davidbilby; if you'd like a condensed version of MM's claims, start with davidbilby's post and read MM's responses.

Finally, I found sjastro's post #254 particularly insightful; here's an extract:

sjastro said:

Here is the typical Mozina method of debating.

Mozina: Whistler waves in the ionosphere-magnetosphere occur in *exactly* these frequency ranges and other ranges too.
Selfsim: Show me the data that indicates whistler and gravitational waves occur "exactly" in these frequency ranges.
Mozina: Why should *I personally* have to do that necessary piece of work for them, and why aren't those frequency ranges, coupling mechanisms and effects on their equipment even documented or discussed in this paper?

Conclusion: Mozina has made up this statement and has no corroborating evidence.

[...]

Mozina also likes employing the "argumentum ad ignorance" fallacy.
In this case the absence of a procedure indicates the procedure never existed.

Click to expand...

¹ As SelfSim noted, that includes a ban on being able to comment on Brian Koberein's One Universe at a Time blog (in this page, his comment dated 19 June 2016)

Oh, I forgot to mention Gravity Spy. It's a citizen science (crowd source) project, specifically on the nature of LIGO 'glitches'. Good fun, and real science ... some glitches look very much like GW signals!

SelfSim said:

In fact he ended up being suspended from the other forum for his libellous insults directed at the respected science blogger, Brian Koberlein, (whom he also bluntly accused of being part of his broader conspiracy - I think 'Reality Check' from JRef will back me up on that .. he was directly involved in the campaign also).

Click to expand...

Although I'm not proud of it, this gave me schadenfreude.

JeanTate said:

Oh, I forgot to mention Gravity Spy. It's a citizen science (crowd source) project, specifically on the nature of LIGO 'glitches'. Good fun, and real science ... some glitches look very much like GW signals!

Click to expand...

I spent a few hours contributing to this. Boring looking at noise signals one after another after another; then I came to a "chirp" signal that could be a GW and I was completely thrilled to think I might be looking at and flagging evidence of a titanic cosmic event from billions of years ago.

JeanTate said:

¹ As SelfSim noted, that includes a ban on being able to comment on Brian Koberlein's One Universe at a Time blog (in this page, his comment dated 19 June 2016)

Click to expand...

He was also suspended, (albeit temporarily), at the Christian forums about a month later (around the 9th/10th July, 2016) for his libellous accusations about Koberlein. The thread took days to be heavily edited by the mods, and now does not contain his original posts.

I note he also continues the very same diatribe at TBolts even today (interwoven with his LIGO misunderstandings), which I would imagine, also leaves their admins rather exposed (legally).

ferd burfle said:

me said:

Oh, I forgot to mention Gravity Spy. It's a citizen science (crowd source) project, specifically on the nature of LIGO 'glitches'. Good fun, and real science ... some glitches look very much like GW signals!

Click to expand...

I spent a few hours contributing to this. Boring looking at noise signals one after another after another; then I came to a "chirp" signal that could be a GW and I was completely thrilled to think I might be looking at and flagging evidence of a titanic cosmic event from billions of years ago.

Click to expand...

These projects are cool like that, aren't they?

Gravity Spy is built on one of the Zooniverse platforms; Higgs Hunters is another, also a citizen science/crowd sourcing project. Its aim is quite ambitious, to find hints of beyond-the-Standard Model physics in outputs from the Large Hadron Collider. I spent a few idle hours on it, didn't find any elusive new exotic particles, but one image I got was amazing ... it was riddled with tracks that seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with the proton-proton collision at the center of the detector. And indeed that's just what it was ... by chance an extensive cosmic ray shower had passed through the detector just when it was collecting data from an LHC collision. What was recorded was muons (secondaries) which had penetrated the rock above the LHC tunnel!

The original Zooniverse project - Galaxy Zoo - is still going strong, currently working through its eighth (tenth?) set of data. It's gotten to the point where there are now likely a dozen or more serendipitous discoveries waiting to be followed up (too many "Hmm, that's odd", too few professional astronomers).

Myself I hang out in Radio Galaxy Zoo, where I'm busy hunting SDRAGNs (see this blog post I wrote on them).

This thread is now officially about Wavy McWaveface https://twitter.com/iamgw150914

The National Science Foundation has been funding LIGO ( Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) since the 1970's. LIGO scientists announced on Feb. 11, 2016 that they have detected gravitational waves that emanate from 1.3 billion years ago. It was Einstein who predicted gravitational waves over a century ago.

If you would like to do a search on what I have mentioned then please feel free to look at the National Science Foundation. One of my favorite places. Thank you.

And ... dare I revive JT's thread with Mr Mozina's latest rant from 'the house of all things electric'?

This time, he's actually written up his gripes and decided to:

"shop this paper (or a similar variant) around to the mainstream publications a bit to solicit some feedback"

Click to expand...

Apart from regurgitating the same nonsense from our marathon CRUS/CFs thread, he appears to be totally oblivious that LIGO also found a second Gravitational Wave a few months after the initial discovery.

(One would think, following his initial meaningless campaign, that at least he would move on ... just a little(?) .. and attempt to demonstrate how his accusations might pertain to the second discovery as well?)

Veto in 1920

Contrary to popular opinion, general relativity (and all its nonsensical spawns such as gravitational waves) was already vetoed. C.G. Abbot refused to let people debate the construct, instead choosing to let two men debate the idea of the nebular hypothesis vs. the island universe theory. Though the force of public opinion, and idolatry, somehow general relativity has survived to genuinely plague the minds of researchers almost 100 years in the future.

https://books.google.com/books?id=OsmfgyONbFMC&pg=PA314&lpg=PA314&dq=%22I+pray+to+god+that+the+progress+of+science+will+send%22&source=bl&ots=AdfIFRgmGd&sig=DVWEsqjd42TcMzb9RIrglJlhCDE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjws5zYr_7SAhVEQCYKHSiDDl0Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=%22I%20pray%20to%20god%20that%20the%20progress%20of%20science%20will%20send%22&f=false

I admit, special relativity is genuine science, but its half-assed step brother of a theory, general relativity, is a plague of thought. An idea that perpetuates by sheer attention. An idea completely absent any reason. Space bending? Time bending? Pure pseudoscience at its finest.

The LIGO contraption probably just detected an electromagnetic disturbance in the atmosphere. Giant metal tubes tend to pick up on those things.