Citizen scientist community engagement with the HiggsHunters project at the Large Hadron Collider

A..J Barr,C.W Kalderon,A Haas

doi:10.18546/rfa.02.2.13

Abstract

The engagement of citizen scientists with the HiggsHunters. org citizen science project is investigated through analysis of behaviour, discussion and survey data. More than 38,000 citizen scientists from 179 countries participated, classifying 1.5 million features of interest on about 39,000 distinct images. While most citizen scientists classified only a handful of images, some classified hundreds or even thousands. Analysis of frequently used terms on the dedicated discussion forum demonstrated that a high level of scientific engagement was not uncommon. Evidence was found for an emergent and distinct technical vocabulary developing within the citizen science community. A survey indicates a high level of engagement and an appetite for further citizen science projects related to the Large Hadron Collider.

Highlights

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is arguably the highest-profile scientific project of our time
Using the data from the HiggsHunters.org project described below, the present study evaluates the extent to which analysis by citizen scientists might be possible at the Large Hadron Collider, and the extent of the engagement of those citizen scientists with that subject matter
The hypothesis that the survey respondents were subject to some degree of selection bias towards the more highly engaged end of the spectrum is tested from their responses to a question asking about the duration of the period during which they performed classification

Summary

Introduction

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is arguably the highest-profile scientific project of our time. In addition to being able to mark off-centre vertices, the citizen scientists are encouraged to select anything ‘weird’ in the images, and to follow up these on the talk forum, where the wider community discusses them This raised several instances of known phenomena, such as cosmic ray showers passing through ATLAS, and some that were unexpected, demonstrating the potential for untrained citizen scientists to isolate interesting features in real LHC collision data. The hypothesis that the survey respondents were subject to some degree of selection bias (compared to the general population of HiggsHunters citizen scientists) towards the more highly engaged end of the spectrum is tested from their responses to a question asking about the duration of the period during which they performed classification (see Table 4). At the time of writing, 61 schools had signed up for this project through IRIS

Summary

Findings

Discussion and reflections

Notes on the contributors