Their point is exactly that the trigger systems are controlled by algorithms based on current theories, which so far have shown nothing for all their efforts.
I haven't been in the field since the LHC started operating but from memory it was exactly billions of events per second and storage could only keep up with hundreds.
No one is setting these things up to go "hmm a particle on a totally unusual trajectory - but not where the Higgs should be so junk it".
If by "so far have shown nothing for all their effort" you mean that no new results were found, that isn't due to the current theories being bad: in fact, it is due to them being too good: they describe the results too well and thus there is not enough difference between the current theories and current results that would require a new theory.
(turned out they did, but nobody at the time knew to account for perturbations caused by the as-yet-undiscovered Neptune)
And depending on how far you want to take this, the neutrino probably would've been dismissed, too, before eventually being detected.
"Oh look, Uranus is doing that odd things again. Doesn't fit in with Newtonian mechanics or my current pet theory so better throw it out."