Data blinding for the nEDM experiment at PSI
Psychological bias towards, or away from, a prior measurement or a theory prediction is an intrinsic threat to any data analysis. While various methods can be used to avoid the bias, e.g. actively not looking at the result, only data blinding is a traceable and thus trustworthy method to circumvent the bias and to convince a public audience that there is not even an accidental psychological bias. Data blinding is nowadays a standard practice in particle physics, but it is particularly difficult for experiments searching for the neutron electric dipole moment, as several cross measurements, in particular of the magnetic field, create a self-consistent network into which it is hard to inject a fake signal. We present an algorithm that modifies the data without influencing the experiment. Results of an automated analysis of the data are used to change the recorded spin state of a few neutrons of each measurement cycle. The flexible algorithm is applied twice to the data, to provide different data to various analysis teams. This gives us the option to sequentially apply various blinding offsets for separate analysis steps with independent teams. The subtle modification of the data allows us to modify the algorithm and to produce a re-blinded data set without revealing the blinding secret. The method was designed for the 2015/2016 measurement campaign of the nEDM experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute. However, it can be re-used with minor modification for the follow-up experiment n2EDM, and may be suitable for comparable efforts.