Team and project composition in big physics experiments

Abstract

Identifying optimal ways of organizing exploration in particle physics mega-labs is a challenging task that requires a combination of case-based and formal epistemic approaches. Data-driven studies suggest that projects pursued by smaller master-teams (fewer members, fewer sub-teams) are substantially more efficient than larger ones across sciences, including experimental particle physics. Smaller teams also seem to make better project choices than larger, centralized teams. Yet the epistemic requirement of small, decentralized, and diverse teams contradicts the often emphasized and allegedly inescapable logic of discovery that forces physicists pursuing the fundamental levels of the physical world to perform centralized experiments in mega-labs at high energies. We explain, however, that this epistemic requirement could be met, since the nature of theoretical and physical constraints in high energy physics and the technological obstacles stemming from them turn out to be surprisingly open-ended.