Reproducing GW150914: the first observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger

TL;DR

This paper attempts to reproduce the GW150914 gravitational wave detection results using publicly available code and data, highlighting reproducibility challenges and offering recommendations for scientific transparency.

Contribution

It is the first effort to reproduce the GW150914 analysis independently using open data and code, emphasizing reproducibility issues in gravitational wave research.

Findings

Main results successfully reproduced

Exact reproduction limited by data availability

Challenges in reproducibility identified and discussed

Abstract

In 2016, LIGO and Virgo announced the first observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger, known as GW150914. To establish the confidence of this detection, large-scale scientific workflows were used to measure the event's statistical significance. They used code written by the LIGO/Virgo and were executed on the LIGO Data Grid. The codes are publicly available, but there has not yet been an attempt to directly reproduce the results, although several analyses have replicated the analysis, confirming the detection. We attempt to reproduce the result presented in the GW150914 discovery paper using publicly available code on the Open Science Grid. We show that we can reproduce the main result but we cannot exactly reproduce the LIGO analysis as the original data set used is not public. We discuss the challenges we encountered and make recommendations for scientists who wish to make their work reproducible.