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One Find, Two Astronomers

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-saw-it-first dept.

Malacon writes "The New York Times is running a story about Debate Between Astronomers who both claim to have discovered the same object beyond Pluto, and almost the same size. Apparantly the US Astronomers had been tracking it for quite some time, but chose to not report it yet. They also claim the Spanish Astronomers stole data to make the find."

8 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. Finders Keepers by fembots · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Richard Pogge, an Ohio State astronomer who uncovered the apparent breach, said that scientists had long lived mostly successfully by a kind of honor system. Astronomers, he said, routinely serve on time allocation committees for telescopes and peer review panels without stealing one another's ideas. "It allows us to have an open, collaborative community,"

    So why can't Dr Brown (the USian) publish his discovery immediately and let the community to chip in and further investigate the finding?

    --
    Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
    1. Re:Finders Keepers by zanderredux · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Maybe he was very serious about keeping scientific correction standards.

      But since the subject of the discussion is fame and merit, well, gotta agree: f**k scientific procedure. If you *think* you've got something new, just publish it away. You might be right and, in that case, you'll have fame and fortune. If not, lay low for a year or so, until people forget, and do it again, ad nauseam.

    2. Re:Finders Keepers by Maverick+TimeSurfer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because that is not how it is done. When such a discovery is made, one does not immediately announce it, partially (although it is not the only reason) in case one turns out to have made a mistake in one's observations. Instead, one carefully documents and verifies the discover, then submits (a) paper(s) to scientific journal(s), to allow other scientists to verify one's work, and then one announces it publicly if it's the sort of discovery that warants public announcement. All of that all can sometimes take a rather long time. The argument might be made that as soon as a new object is confirmed to exist, it should be announced so that everyone else can help with the studying of it. That, however, rather kills most of the fun of having made a new discovery- if one doesn't even get the chance to be the first one to study it in-depth, what's the point?

      --
      Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
    3. Re:Finders Keepers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not in the astronomy world, dumbass. You call up another observatory and go, "HEY! Do you see that, too?"

      It ain't like they're trying to disprove gravity or something...

  2. How can this be an issue? by bhirsch · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Shouldn't Dr. Brown have some documentation of his find other than the direction his telescope was pointed in, or at least witnesses to back him up?

  3. Re:This could get ugly... by johnpaul191 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    as opposed to the testosterone filled world of internet shit-talking?

  4. Re:Timeline... by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Based on the coordinates, Ortiz saw something interesting, and since no one claimed to have seen that interesting something yet, Ortiz made the claim.
    Not really. They had to check the coordinates at several different times in order to find out the exact orbit of what was being tracked. This is stealing, plain and simple.
  5. that's the problem with Brown's "discovery" by idlake · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When such a discovery is made, one does not immediately announce it, partially (although it is not the only reason) in case one turns out to have made a mistake in one's observations.

    But Brown did just that: they announced the name of the object in an abstract but didn't supply the orbital data or evidence. And now, they want to claim credit for the discovery of the object because, essentially, they were the first ones to publish the existence but not the data for the new object. If Brown had waited with his announcement, then Ortiz couldn't have searched for the images on the web.

    I don't know whether Ortiz committed scientific misconduct, but there is obviously something wrong with what Brown did: his abstract shouldn't have contained identifiable information, and/or he should have asked to be kept private. Brown's behavior itself may have been an innocent mistake, or it may also have been scientific misconduct. In particular, if he submitted the abstract announcing the find without actually having all the data ready, that would constitute scientific misconduct.

    To me, it looks like both Brown and Ortiz made serious mistakes. So far, however, I haven't seen any concrete evidence for misconduct in this story.