Slashdot Mirror
One Find, Two Astronomers
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."
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.
I admit that I've never seen two astronomers fight each other. But, I imagine it would be like watching two european Tour de France cyclists going at it, and we all know that aint pretty!
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
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?
Obviously these astronomers don't read slashdot otherwise they would tried for first post !!
That is all.
They found the planet where the Loyal Officers are holding Xenu captive?
Trolling is a art,
The debate is who found it first. Brown says he has logs that Ortiz visited his web site with information on his telescope's position right before he made the discovery. I don't think its as much an allegation of stolen data as much as lack of integrity.
Obviously, threaten to divide the object in half to give each team one piece. Whichever team prefers to give up their claim and keep the object intact, is the true discoverer.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Mike Brown has placed a rather detailed timeline of events (from his perspective) on his webpage:
i z/
http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/ort
IMHO the ball is in Ortiz' court now...
Great, just Great! Now I have to move it again. I takes forever to get a saucer out to my command ship. Damn nosy humans. Do they realize how much of a pain hiding a forward base like that is on a moments notice.
Good thing We keep an eye on postings on slashdot otherwise somebody significant might take notice. I have at least three or four reposts of this story to move it before it hits a site like Vampire Weekly or Britney Talk and the world takes notice.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Noone expects the spanish astronomer inquisition
"It's not kosher to point your telescope at somebody else's object, unless you ask."
;) BwaaaHaaaaHaaaa
Yes, it's wrong, just wrong to sneakily look at somebody else's object
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
Dupe-tastic
From the blurb:
However, even more interesting is the intrigue behind the press conferences revealing Xena earlier this year. It seems that, using the astronomers' own observation logs (publicly available over the Web) and some key details inadvertently revealed in earlier announcements, someone was planning on 'discovering' the objects first and claiming credit. This was why the scientists 'pre-announced' the existence of Xena back in July, to establish priority.
At least Zonk didn't do it (for once).
That worked great when all scientists were rich aristocrats. Now, any peasant can be a scientist and compete for funding...
It's even worse when the allocation of funding is based not on scientific merit but on alignment with some political party or movement. [grumble]
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
Oh, wait, it's been done. It's called the Patent Office, and it sucks because nobody does any of the above anyway, people get sued to oblivion and those with the money abuse the hell out of it.
Besides which, if anyone DID devise a system that properly credited discoveries, Crick and Watson would be all but written out of the DNA story and Rosalind Franklin (the least-talked-about person) would be an instant megastar.
Now, Crick and Watson actually did the Right Thing in many ways - they brought to light a finding that would otherwise never have been published, AND gave quite considerable credit (albeit credit the media and history books have largely ignored) to Ms. Franklin for her work.
The "correct" thing would be for the American and Spanish astronomers to cut the same sort of deal - the Americans admit that they fell asleep at the wheel, but the Spanish admit that they couldn't have done it without the American work, so jointly crediting both teams for each other's contribution.
It won't happen, of course. Egos have become involved. When that happens, any kind of mutual respect is out the window. (Newton and Descartes had feuds over who discovered the Laws of Motion, entirely because of ego. Neither was willing to give due credit - it was all or nothing, gunfight at the OK Corral.)
It is feuds like this that give the impression to a lot of people that scientists are all megalomaniacs (where do you think sci-fi's Mad Scientist idea comes from?) and utterly divorced from reality. Mind you, the average person is no better, ego-wise, they just don't start international incidents over them.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
That would not happen until the consensus vote was successful in deciding that a man would be sent to Mars as opposed to another planet/moon.
Also, it would probably still be mired in the courts by appeals from the "Friends of the Woman on Mars Foundation".
Furthermore, funding for the project would still have to be collected from member nations, and each one would, instamagically, face a grave domestic crisis of dire financial consequences on the day of the wire transfer.
Lastly, the Men of Much Religion would encourage their followers to rid the world of the scourge of science: this evil that poisons the holy hearts of men and makes them think of themselves as gods. They would cite the Holy, Sacred, and Inviolate Scriptures to denounce the Man on Mars program as the establishment of a Worship of Mars Cult, and pressure local politician with sunday school bake-sales and fiery sermons from the Pulpits of Righteousness.
If you want things done: Put the geeks in the control room, find some shrewd bankers, sleazy politicians, and greedy businessmen, add a sprinkle of alpha military types and you've got yourself a space program that will make the general population ooh and aah with wonderment. Oh, and a few billion dollars. But the money is generally forthcoming.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Grazias!
Un Astrónomo Español.
We get Marty McFly to go back in time in Doc Brown's Delorian........oh crap......wrong Doc!
First, there was "They Live", then there was "Cripple Fight"... But I really want to see two astronomers go at it in a head-to-head battle royal!
BBH
Apparently this isn't the first time international competition has resulted in dubious claims of "discovery". The most interesting part, IMHO, is:
Emphasis mine. Interesting words in the era of "intellectual property".
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
If you use some elses data, then you are suppossed to at least acknowledge that you used it, and better yet you should get their permission.
Ortiz et al did neither, and I think they should be fired for doing so. What they did was underhanded and it destroys the trust so vital to academic collaboration.
I think the evidence is pretty strong that Ortiz found out Brown's preliminary designation from an abstract for a conference paper and then looked up the object in google to find the telescope logs. This then enabled Ortiz to calculate an orbit which he used to find the object in his own old data.
Without Brown's abstract, and observing logs he would have had bupkiss.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
the old article didn't mention the Ortiz connection...
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
I love America, and the American people.
I have been there once, and i plan to return often.
As you say, the assholes on TV is not representative of the American people. This is VERY true.
But, why do you let these assholes represent you?
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
So, the guys looked at where the telescope was pointed. So, they guessed web pages to get that information. Big deal.
That is just as easily explained by assuming that they were curious whether their competitors had discovered the same object.
Looking at web pages on a public server is not evidence of wrongdoing. And if it suggests anything, it suggests that they already had pretty much found the same object; otherwise, how would they have known what to search for and where to look in the first place?
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.
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
Brown had no problem with Ortiz beating him on the announcement and gave Ortiz full credit for the discovery... until he found out Ortiz used his data... then he had a problem.
If Brown had waited with his announcement, then Ortiz couldn't have searched for the images on the web.
But he wanted to present it at a conference, which meant he had to submit an abstract.
I don't know whether Ortiz committed scientific misconduct
well he did. He used Brown's data without attribution.
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.
ok Brown made a mistake, but that doesn't mean its ok to steal his data. That's like saying it's ok to rob a house that left its door open... or to steal a print out of his data that he left lying on his desk. It's misconduct to take someone else's work and pass it off as your own.
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.
That's bullshit. 1) An abstract isn't the whole paper, and you don't put data or results in an abstract 2) he had the data when he wrote the abstract 3) it is perfectly reasonable (and common practice) to submit an abstract before all of the work is done, its just an abstract not a whole paper.
in no way is what Brown did misconduct. What Ortiz et al did is some of the worst kind of misconduct. He stole Brown's work and passed it off as his own. Ortiz and his whole group should be fired and should never work as astronomers again. If his institution doesn't fire him they will lose all credibility.
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.
Brown made a dumb mistake of not protecting his data. Ortiz made an ethical mistake of stealing that data. I cannot understand why you don't think what Ortiz et al did was not misconduct.
I don't understand why so many slashdotters are defending Ortiz. It's just like someone taking GPL code from a CVS server and passing it off as thier own without mentioning where they got the code and after they're caught, saying its ok because the project was taking forever to make an official release.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
We were just discussing in our lab, yesterday, how a scientist at a conference in Florence (Firenze) had forgotten to acknowledge work a number of other scientists had done before that led to a discovery "he" made, which noone called him on, but that was being talked about afterwards, since some of the people who did the original work were in the same room as the presenter, and most attending knew it.
The astronomers should have claimed the discovery and given credit for the US observations to the US team. Or written the paper and offered a co-authorship. Going for the full credit just blows up in your face. Even the discovers of DNA have a cloudy history, since they didn't include a competing colleague who was the source of their data and kept them from incorrect conclusions.
But that's just my opinion.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We found a very bright slowly moving object in three images while checking some of our older images of the modest TNO survey that we carry out from Sierra Nevada since 2002.
And what made them look at those images? How did they find that needle in the huge mountain of old data?
If they did a systematic search, where's the evidence? To me is seems very likely that they used Brown's data to calculate an orbit for the object, and then used that orbit to find the old images.
Based on what I've seen, Ortiz's story is just as plausible as Brown's. If you had discovered a new object and you read an abstract about another such discovery, wouldn't you also try hard to determine whether the other object was the same as yours?
If that is so, why didn't they mention Brown's observations in their announcement. They were aware of Brown's data and didn't cite it. That is academic misconduct, and they should be dismissed from their institutions.
I've made what was a big discovery only to find prior work by another group that was similar enough for me to not be able to claim the discovery (even though they didn't know what they really had). And I made a point to cite their work. It was an obscure sviet-era russian publications no one would have found, but I cited it and pointed out that they had made the same discovery years before. Sure it sucks to lose the glory, but it was the ethical thing to do.
Generally, in science, if you don't protect your experimental results or if you carelessly talk about new ideas to other people, don't complain if people scoop you.
It's one thing to be scooped, it's another to have your work used without attribution. Brown has proof that they viewed his data and they didn't mention it in their announcements. That is misconduct plain and simple.
I think what Slashdotters find annoying is that people leave their data unprotected and then try to blame others for the mere possibility of having misused the data.
This isn't the possibility of misuse, Ortiz et al viewed Brown's data multiple times, and they didn't cite it... It doesn't matter if Borwn left the data on a table at a restaurant for Ortiz to find or if it was on a public server... Ortiz *knew* it was Brown's data, and he should have mentioned that he used it.
in any case, let's keep this in perspective: the discovery of a new planet, at this point, is not a crowning intellectual achievement, it is simply sweat and a lot of luck.
maybe in your view. But when kids dream of being astronomers, discovering a new planet is the sort of thing they dream of doing. If I found a new planet, I would view it as one of the main achievements of my career. And its one thing to be scooped, and another to be stolen from.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.