I think the end of the sentence is interesting as well... ", said Robert Wagoner, a theoretical physicist at Stanford University who is not affiliated with LIGO. “They are the only ones who have had access to the raw data.”

That kind of gives the lie to the conspiracy that many would like to believe... And before you go demanding that they release the raw data (in addition to the processed data), I hope you are aware of how many disk drives you're going to need to fit into that station wagon.

I mean yeah there's probably lots of instrument telemetry in the data, but let's give LIGO the benefit of the doubt and say that the instrumentation has consistent performance through null control regions of the timeseries and the "interesting" regions of the timeseries (bloop #1, in this case, but apparently now bloops #2, and #3 which were not analyzed by the person doing the criticism).

the 'truckloads' of data are basically all the uninteresting parts of the timeseries. Of course there is statistically going to be random events where the noises correlate at the level seen by the critique, and maybe the truckloads of data show that those are frequent enough that say 1/3 of the bloops should have that correlated noise superimposed on the 'actual signal'; and maybe that bloops 2 and 3 do not have the correlated noise if you apply the same analysis to it.

How much more 'raw data' do you need to reach a conclusions that refutes the criticism?

I've yet to find a good solution to this increasingly more prevelant sentiment in the current highly-specialized niche type of scientific advancement. I always looked up to the autodidacts of history and wanted to emulate them, but all I hear is "that's impossible these days".

It's an empirical claim, not a normative one.

it's a terrible claim. You can't claim that for all of the subdisciplines in the massive LIGO project, every single field is covered by the 'topmost expert'. Especially for a criticism about signal processing - there are so many adjacent or even distant scientific fields that are likely to have individuals with superior 'expertise', in the same class of algorithms used for the signal processing.

The claim is that only the people working in the project are qualified to criticize; that's almost the opposite. People who are working on the project are more often than not the LEAST qualified to criticize, because they're heads down in the weeds and have too much invested in the particular details and experimental choices that were made.

Moreover, for LIGO specifically, not every scientist is motivated to work for a high-risk, long-time-till-result endeavor. In fact, I'd suspect the people most likely to approach things with the right critical mindset are antiselected from working on the project.

It is interesting to see how someone not familiar with these sorts of projects interprets this stuff.

The quote has nothing to do with who is trained in signal processing in the abstract, and everything to do with who has a detailed understanding of this particular machine.

The initial paper critical of the ligo work absolutely has everything to do with signal processing in the abstract, so the quote (which refers to the criticism) must, as well.

If you invented a new sort of internal combustion engines and I disputed whether it could work based on abstract ignition theory, my claims are still implicitly dependent on my understanding your design and the actual physical device, regardless of what I concentrate on in my abstract.

Please reread. Those other experts are apparently Fourier analyzing processed data to "remove the signal". Whether they are doing it correctly or not, any real check will require looking at the underlying data, which is what the non-LIGO associated scientist said. Misquoting someone is not a good way to start an argument.

no. LIGO released the non-processed data, and the other scientists processed it separately without using (presumably high-bandpass) filters that the LIGO scientists used.

page 3:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.04191.pdf

I think you are misinterpreting the quote. I think you believe it means:

"The only persons who have the right critical mindset to assess this paper are in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration"

I believe instead it is simply saying:

"The paper has no obvious flaws that anyone unfamiliar with LIGO could point out. Therefore the best people who could assess it are the LIGO team"

"The paper has no obvious flaws that anyone unfamiliar with LIGO could point out. Therefore the best people who could assess it are the LIGO team"

What's the point of peer review, then? Why bother publishing detailed experimental reports and providing access to data if the team gives it the two thumbs up and no one on the team sees any flaws. Their word should be good enough.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. What is the point in peer review of what?

The fact that one team is more qualified to analyse a paper that another team has produced has nothing to do with whether or not that paper should be independently reviewed.