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."

Comments

Finders Keepers

[fembots]

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?

Re:Finders Keepers

[zanderredux]

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.

Re:Finders Keepers

[Maverick TimeSurfer]

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?

Re:Finders Keepers

[helioquake]

Mike Brown makes some comments in his web page:

On discovery of new planet

I really shouldn't hotlink it w/o written consent from the author, but...heck, CalTech ought to be able to handle the load. Anyway, I make no extra comment of my own on this incident, but you guys might want to read up why the US guys did what and how they did.

Re:Finders Keepers

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

This could get ugly...

[Eightyford]

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!

Re:This could get ugly...

[johnpaul191]

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

How can this be an issue?

[bhirsch]

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?

Re:How can this be an issue?

[Darth Cow]

If you'll actually RTFA, you'll notice that the webserver hosting the information on where the telescope was pointing had the IP address of the Spanish researchers in its log files. More specifically, the Spanish astronomers jumped straight through to the page with the telescope coordinates listed for the particular object ID number that was also used in the published abstract. They didn't just randomly browse and chance upon it, but directly returned to the page multiple times within a day or so of when they anounced that they had "found" the object.

So Dr. Brown was negligent in that the data was publically (albeit difficultly) accessible, but that doesn't mean that Dr. Ortiz's stealing of the data was at all moral. It's pretty sleazy to take credit for somebody else's hard work without even acknowledgements.

First post ?

[karvind]

Obviously these astronomers don't read slashdot otherwise they would tried for first post !!

The Spanish Astronomers

[jjeffries]

Mod me down if you must, but The Spanish Astronomers is a kickass band name.

That is all.

Re:The Spanish Astronomers

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but The Spanish Monkey Astronomers Syndrome is an even more kick-ass disease name.

Re:The Spanish Astronomers

[That's Unpossible!]

Yeah, NO ONE expects the Spanish Astronomers.

Especially Michael Brown, apparantly.

Re:How the hell

[bhirsch]

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.

Solomon's judgement

[ewg]

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.

Timeline...

[Ariane 6]

Mike Brown has placed a rather detailed timeline of events (from his perspective) on his webpage:

http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/orti z/

IMHO the ball is in Ortiz' court now...

Re:Timeline...

[Henry V .009]

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.

Thanks for the tip

[infonography]

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.

Ortiz and Santos-Sanz do not look legit

[Henry V .009]

I have to side with the Americans here. From Brown's website:

Multiple web-based observing records of the 1.3-meter SMARTS telescope are accessed, first through an internet search engine, then, apparently, by guessing names of related web pages. This access is the first time these records have been accessed by anyone outside of the SMARTS consortium. The IP address from which the access came is 161.111.165.49, which resolves as dae39.iaa.csic.es. This IP address corresponds to a computer at the IAA, the Instituto de Astrofisica in Spain. The IAA is the home institution of Ortiz and Santos-Sanz, who two days later claim discovery of this object. Each of the accessed observing records contains the name "K40506A" and points to the location of the object on different nights. Knowing where the object is on a single night does not allow you to predict a position on any other nights, so access to a single record could be potentially benign. However, the multiple records of observations on multiple nights could be used by anyone with astronomical knowledge to accurately predict the location at any point in the past or future. ...More incriminating evidence follows

This really does not look like it was all on the up-and-up.

Sneaking a peek

[glowworm]

"It's not kosher to point your telescope at somebody else's object, unless you ask."

Yes, it's wrong, just wrong to sneakily look at somebody else's object ;) BwaaaHaaaaHaaaa

Re:this is sad

[rco3]

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]

NERD FIGHT!

[BigBuckHunter]

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

Did the British steal Neptune?

[maggard]

Check out this fascinating Dec. '02 article: Scientific American: The Case of the Pilfered Planet [ ASTRONOMY ]

Apparently this isn't the first time international competition has resulted in dubious claims of "discovery". The most interesting part, IMHO, is:

Whatever the case, Adams utterly failed to communicate his results forcefully to his colleagues and to the world. A discovery does not consist merely of launching a tentative exploration of an interesting problem and producing some calculations; it also involves realizing that one has made a discovery and conveying it effectively to the scientific world

Emphasis mine. Interesting words in the era of "intellectual property".

Why Brown didn't report earlier

[rdwald]

A lot of people are saying, "Well, if Dr. Brown wanted to get the credit, he should have announced the discovery as soon as he made it." I like Dr. Brown's response on why waiting benefits not only the scientific community but also the public at large:

Consider, for example, the instantaneous Ortiz et al. announcement of the existence of 2003 EL61. Headlines in places like the BBC web site breathlessly exclaimed "new object may be twice the size of Pluto." But even at the time we knew that 2003 EL61 had a satellite and was only 30% the mass of Pluto. We quickly got the truth out, but just barely. Sadly, other interesting aspects of 2003 EL61 also got lost in the shuffle. No one got to hear that it rotates every 4 hours, faster than anything else known in the Kuiper belt. Or how that fast rotation causes it to be shaped like a cigar. Or how we use the existence of the satellite to calculate the mass. All of these are interesting things that would have let the public learn a bit more about the mysteries of physics and of the solar system. In the press you get one chance to tell the story. In the case of the instantaneous announcement of 2003 EL61 the story was simply "there is a big object out there." We are saddened by the lost opportunity to tell a richer scientific story and to have the public listen for just one day to a tale that included a bit of astronomy, a bit of physics, and a bit of detective story.

Ortiz violated Scientific Ethics

[EccentricAnomaly]

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.

Use timestamping and digital certs for your ideas

[guidog]

1. scribble down ideas
2. digitally sign
3. send to official timestamping certification authority
4. give thoughts to reviewers

that's the problem with Brown's "discovery"

[idlake]

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.

discovering someone else's data isn't a discovery

[EccentricAnomaly]

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.