{"paper":{"title":"Biased rate estimates in bump-hunt searches","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"hep-ph","authors_text":"Finn O'Gara, Matt O'Neill, William Murray","submitted_at":"2025-06-02T10:11:50Z","abstract_excerpt":"The cleanest way to discover a new particle is generally the \"bump-hunt\" methodology: looking for a localised excess in a mass (or related) distribution. However, if the mass of the particle being discovered is not known the procedure of quoting the most significant excess seen is \"greedy\", and random fluctuations from the background can be merged with the signal. This means that an observed 3{\\sigma} evidence probably has the rate over-estimated by of order 10% and the mass uncertainty underestimated by more like 20%. If the width of the particle being discovered is also unknown, or the exper"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2506.01505","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2506.01505/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}