Confusing paragraph in RAVEN subthreshold circular text
The current RAVEN subthreshold GW + GRB circular reports the following sentence:
This gravitational wave candidate is not significant enough on its own to produce a public alert but its coincidence with the {SNEWS neutrino | GRB} trigger increases its significance.
Although we often informally say that the external trigger "increases the significance" of the GW candidate, this can be correct or not depending on what one means with "significance of the GW candidate". We have the GW FAR(s) for the trigger from the various CBC and/or burst pipelines. These only depend on GW data and thus do not change when an external trigger is present. We then have separate searches for joint events between GW and other messengers (namely RAVEN) which produce their own measures of significance. These significances also do not really "increase" because of the coincidence; they result from the coincidence in the first place. Finally, the RAVEN FAR does not somehow supersede the GW-only FAR; it is just a different search. I agree that the presence of a nearby GRB "makes the GW candidate more interesting" in a conversational sense, but the circular text should be more precise. How about this:
Based on the analysis of gravitational-wave data alone, this candidate does not meet our criteria for a public alert. However, a search performed by the RAVEN pipeline found a significant coincidence between this candidate and [external trigger].
This sentence should probably be moved/blended with the later paragraph describing the RAVEN analysis.