> I feel really sorry for the scientists who've spent decades working on this as part of a global collaboration to now have LIGO take all of the credit for this discovery.
You might as well say the same thing about CERN and the Higgs. That's how credit for discoveries works. You can't just give it to "the whole scientific community" so you pick the most specific attribution that makes sense.
You absolutely could though. Here's what you could say:
"Even though this discovery is our success, I would like to emphasize the fact that none of this would have been possible, had it not been for decades of work in this particular field by thousands of people who dedicated lives to pave the way for this final success. Just like Rome wasn't built in one day, such important discoveries are always the visible part of a huge network of dedicated individuals. This work will serve as a testimony to their hard work, we did build on the shoulders of giants and we'll always be grateful. Now's the time for celebration, but also for taking comfort in the knowing that the coming generations of scientists and engineers will build upon our findings for even greater discoveries in the future. To everyone, thank you."
That kind of stuff is both respectful of past discoveries in the field and creates a sense of community in science as a whole. It's much better in my opinion that singling out a couple of people, who despite their obvious hard work and brilliance, didn't single-handedly come up with the whole concept.
it's understood that research builds upon past research which is documented and cited. i think that accomplishes the majority of what you're saying, albeit more tersely.
If you watch the announcements you will notice that the individual detector teams do thank them for providing them with an excellent beam to work with, etc..
Also I would like to mention that unlike in the GR wave case the detectors do make the discoveries independently.
Having multiple independent detectors on one accelerator is one cheap way to take care of reproducibility of results.
You might as well say the same thing about CERN and the Higgs. That's how credit for discoveries works. You can't just give it to "the whole scientific community" so you pick the most specific attribution that makes sense.