>according to Oxford physicists analyzing data from the Large Hadron Collider

>data gathered during the Large Hadron Collider’s second run, by physicists at Oxford University

>Sources: Oxford University, CERN

Did the Oxford group actually not do the relevant analysis as the university suggested?

(I conclude from the lack of mention in my current and previous universities' news -- wot, no Tara Shears? -- that at least their LHCb groups weren't significantly involved!)

2 of the 10 people who worked on the analysis are at Oxford. The rest are affiliated to CERN, Milano-Bicocca, EPFL and Manchester

Consider it like any other resource for scientific exploration. If it was a radio telescope array and a group from Oxford made a discovery while analyzing the massive amounts of data those generate, the array facility wouldn't get top credit for the discovery.

That might be how it works in astronomy, but not in particle physics. The collaborations which build and operate the detectors are also the people who get to analyse the data. There is "open data" but it's released after a long embargo period and is much less complete. (In fact, you won't find any LHCb open data yet because CERN won't give us enough storage to host it.)

Officially, all qualified members sign all papers. The names of the people who worked on an analysis are not publicised. There is already a preference to only work on analysis, because it's cheap and easy (no need to send people to CERN or kit-out expensive labs), but that doesn't help much in the way of actually collecting data, so "service work" shouldn't be discouraged by attributing extra credit to people doing analysis.

Institutes sometimes write press releases such as this where they exaggerate their involvement. In this instance, only 2 out of 10 people in the analysis group are affiliated to Oxford. It's very disingenuous not to acknowledge that they're part of a larger collaboration.

Thanks for elaborating, I wasn't aware of the different cultures ( which sounds reasonable from what you describe)