Embargo

An embargo is enforced isolation between teams during a blind-replication protocol, designed to prevent cross-contamination of independent analyses while the work is in progress. Shep Doeleman's "absolute, 100% embargo" on cross-team communication during the Event Horizon Telescope's seven-week imaging sprint in June and July 2018 is the canonical worked example; the embargo discipline is enforceable by social norm if the leadership commits to it. The embargo is not a security measure but a structural one — it turns the period of isolation into a designed dramatic arc that culminates in the convergence event. See integrity-through-convergence and convergence-event.