The Screw, the Bug and the Schemer: Uncertainty Resulting from Infrastructural Ruptures and Social Cuts in Data-Driven High-Energy Physics

• In Event: Precision and Uncertainty in a World of Data - II

Abstract

A loose screw delays the start of the “world machine”, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), for more than a year. Thousands of code bugs are harvested by physicists and online community to secure the flow of proton-proton collision data in the LHC experiment. Similar unpredictable and recurring ruptures and cuts rhythmize scientific production of knowledge (Barad 2007) in the realm of the uncertainty principle. Their existence not only contributes to the emergence of new solutions, but also exposes the wariness accompanying data-driven experiments, especially when it comes to mediating data through computer simulations and machine learning.
Scientific insights that emerge in the laborious process of data purification are accompanied by uncertainties and breaks pervading their epistemic infrastructure (Star-Leigh 2011). The path to scientific certainty is paved by procedural uncertainty at the heart of which lies prediction. High-energy physicists want to prevent future failings and secure past assumptions (Urry 2016). More importantly, such material and digital ruptures go hand in hand with cuts marked by disruptive social interactions, intrigues and power play. In the long run, researchers have to often plot and take the back door.
This paper reflects uncertainty, taking a closer look at the temporality of cuts and ruptures, arguing for an ethnographic rhythm analysis (Lefebvre 2004, Jackson, Ribes, Buyuktur, Bowker 2011) thereof. It draws on findings from a long-term ethnographic study of the biggest data-driven scientific experiments in the world of physics.

Author

• Anne Dippel, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena