sPHENIX Institutional Board

[Rosi Reed <rosijreed AT lehigh.edu>]

Hi Dennis,

To answer a few of your questions, yes, it was a deliberate choice not to specify STAR and sPHENIX. 

Our charge was to set out principles regarding people who were planning on being members of two RHIC experiments at the same time, so the example of someone who leaves one collaboration and joins another was not part of this.  In fact, this has never been explicitly forbidden even during the days when people could not be a part of two collaborations.  People did change collaborations and did similar analyses even after doing so.  I suppose we even had violation of these principles as people could analyze the same data sets after changing collaborations.  Perhaps this is something to consider, if we believe that this principle is important than having someone analyze star data from 2023, then completely leave star, head to sPHENIX and then perform nearly the same analysis on the 2023 data would be a problem.  The question is, how much scrutiny should there be in this case where someone is genuinely leaving one collaboration for the other.

Under the statement, someone who measured X in STAR in 2016 (the last year there was a substantial data set of a species and energy planned for sPHENIX) would be allowed to measure X in sPHENIX in 2023.  What they would not be allowed to do is remain a STAR member and also remeasure X in STAR in 2023.  They would also have to be very careful in giving information to a person in STAR who is measuring X in STAR in 2023 as well. 

Regards,

Rosi

On Tue, Nov 30, 2021 at 3:01 PM Perepelitsa, Dennis via sPHENIX-IB-l <sphenix-ib-l AT lists.bnl.gov> wrote:

Dear Dave and all,

Thanks to the task force for their work addressing this important issue.

Here are some thoughts:

I wonder whether the phrase “the same measurement” may be a bit narrow. A given piece of physics can be explored through multiple, distinct measurements [1]. Thus, the potential for a conflict of interest could arise even when a group is working on formally different measurements in the two experiments. The phrase “at a minimum” hints at this a bit, but I wonder if we could spell it out more. For example, we could replace “the same measurement” with “similar measurements”, or “a measurement with substantially similar physics focus”.

The statement seems focused on overlaps between concurrent measurements in the present or future. Should we be interested in a group’s previous research? If my group measured observable X in 2020 with STAR, but we have now left STAR and want to perform a repeat measurement of X in sPHENIX, does that come under the purview of this statement?

Finally, I was curious if it was a specific choice to not explicitly name “sPHENIX” and “STAR” as the two experiments. Is the spirit of the statement also intended to apply to groups making similar measurements at, say, PHENIX and sPHENIX? (This seems not likely, but possible.)

Dennis

[1] - One example might be the open question at RHIC about the fate of radiated energy from partons passing through the QGP. Measurements by STAR and PHENIX give somewhat different physical pictures. These are not “the same" measurement (i.e. hard-core-matched jets in STAR vs. gamma+hadron correlations in PHENIX) but somebody working on one would surely give the appearance of having a vested interest in the outcome of the other. And clearly this is physics that sPHENIX will be interested in investigating in detail.

> On Nov 29, 2021, at 9:56 AM, David Morrison via sPHENIX-IB-l <sphenix-ib-l AT lists.bnl.gov> wrote:
>
> Dear sPHENIX IB,
>
> Please find attached a draft "Statement of Principles" crafted by the
> joint task force on membership in STAR and sPHENIX.  We are soliciting
> your feedback on the attached text so that we can formulate a reply to
> the task force.  The statement is one paragraph long, so it doesn't take
> long to read, but the principles it articulates are worth some
> reflection.  We would appreciate any feedback you may have (including
> "looks good to me") by the end of the day Friday, December 3.
>
> We appreciate the thought and effort the task force – with members from
> STAR and sPHENIX - has put into developing this statement. The task
> force members are Declan Keene, Donald Koete, Rosi Reed, Ron Belmont,
> and Bill Zajc.
>
> Regards,
> Dave and Gunther
>
> --
> David Morrison  Brookhaven National Laboratory  phone: 631-344-5840
>                 Physics Department, Bldg 510 C    fax: 631-344-3253
>                           Upton, NY 11973-5000  email: dave AT bnl.gov
> <statement of principles.pdf><statement of principles.docx>_______________________________________________
> sPHENIX-IB-l mailing list
> sPHENIX-IB-l AT lists.bnl.gov
> https://lists.bnl.gov/mailman/listinfo/sphenix-ib-l

Dennis V. Perepelitsa
Assistant Professor, Physics Department
University of Colorado Boulder



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Rosi Reed
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Lehigh University
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