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News Of SETI Signal Just Bad Reporting
The Bad Astronomer writes "Rumors have been flying in recent days that the SETI project has received a strong signal from space, indicating the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life. Bad Astronomy breaks down the origins of this (false) claim, which mostly amounts to a heaping helping of shoddy journalism. 'I just talked to Dan Wertheimer, the astronomer quoted in the article. He told me that the original interview was about sending signals into space (so-called active SETI) as opposed to just listening for aliens. After the interview, he talked to the reporter about some of the astronomy he does, including looking at what are called radio transients: bursts of radio waves that are seen once and never repeat. These may come from one-off events like colliding neutron stars, exploding stars, and so on. Somehow, in the article the reporter mixed up the observation of the transient signals with detecting a signal from E.T.'"
Only the true messiah would deny his divinity.
Ergo...I think this denial is a sure sign that SETI has found something.
I for one welcome our incompetent journalist overlords.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
It really was alien, but the aliens are already here, and they're covering it up so they can terraform our planet with global warming.
Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.
That saying proves itself everyday. I know most people don't understand science, but if you are reporting on it at least pay attention long enough to accurately report what you were told by someone who does understand. Why do people think it's ok to be proud of their ignorance? Its one thing to own your weaknesses having tried and failed, but it seems like most non-technical people stopped trying.
Stay tuned for this reporter's interview with a McDonald's manager. It turns out he actually invented cows!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
They believe someone was trying to cover-up the shocking truth as his screen saver kept disappearing every time he moved the mouse.
Is that they aren't likely to let the facts get in the way of a good story.
It also pisses me off greatly when newsreaders append their own opinion to the end of a news story. You are a newsreader dammit. Just supply the facts and let people make up their own mind - that is if it is possible for you to supply the facts without your personal bias in the first place.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Here's the cached article: Has E.T. Made A Call? [Google]
oO0Oo
.. or awesome publicity stunt?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Mr. Harley: Your impatience is quite understandable.
Klaatu: I'm impatient with stupidity. My people have learned to live without it.
Mr. Harley: I'm afraid my people haven't. I'm very sorry... I wish it were otherwise.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
It's the only way to be sure.
At the bottom of the blog post I put a link to the cached article, and I took a snapshot of it which is on my Flickr account. It's all linked on the blog.
*** Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer http://www.badastronomy.com
The problem with journalism is that journalists tend to report on so many different topics, they often don't really understand them. It's like if a programmer was given a totally different assignment every day. Even the best one couldn't do a good job because it would take weeks for them to understand how things work and all the terminology.
Ideally, instead of relatively few full time journalists, they should have many part time journalists who work full time in the industry they report on. The quality of the writing might suffer a bit, but it would be far more accurate.
Fortunately, we are seeing the rise of blogs where there are many people who know what they are talking about.
it wouldn't surprise me if it said that at the time of the recieval, the equipment was "pointed at Uranus"
Particles, stuff that matters.
What if the aliens were trying to contact us while visiting Earth? After all, long distance calls can be quite expensive.
The web, as a reflection of the population as a whole, is chock full of wishful thinking about fantasies. The youtubes seemed to be clogged with "evidence" of UFOs, angels, monsters, ghosts, etc.
Frankly, it's a little disappointing to see a lack of critical thinking. I'm all for discovering amazing new things, in any topic. But defending the stories wholesale under the guise of "how can you deny all the evidence?" kinda paints a picture of cultist mentality. Somewhat scary and journalists are not immune. They just want something that sounds like a "scoop" and grab the eyeballs (and sell the ads).
SETI is a worthwhile endeavor to me, but of course they'd hold a press conference if something big didn't filter away.
Dozens report seeing UFO over Stephenville, Texas which must've been neutron stars colliding in the air over that Wal-Mart.
technical writing / development
Should the reporter get fired, he has a great future as a Slashdot editor.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Oh, my! I read the original cached article and it read exactly like something from The Onion. Even the quotes seemed like the fake quotes even if they were real quotes taken out of context.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
It did come from a system that went Nova though. Signal, "What's up with the sun? Oh shiiiitttttt........".
Not knowing much about how SETI is designed, I know that we're a moving solar system so if an alien on another moving planet received a signal from a certain broadcast direction and just reflected the beam in the direction of greatest strength, perhaps in the direction of a mobile gravitationally lensing black hole, even just ten light years in round trip time, the signal would miss us completely.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Is that you know the reporter will keep his job. If you're dumb enough to misinterpret by that degree the words that someone spoke to you, then you should have no job reporting on anything.
The article actually contained the sentence "Across the globe, researchers searching for signs of life in space were abuzz this week with word that a mystery signal has been picked up by a giant radio-telescope in Puerto Rico."
This was not just a science neophyte failing to understand big sciency words, this was a reporter blatantly making shit up.
"Choosing to refrain from producing another person demonstrates a profound love for all life" [vhemt.org]
...or timely cover-up?
Seriously, does anyone believe this kind of discovery would ever be casually announced, if made public at all?
^[:q!
...after the MIB show up with their flashy thing!
This reminds me of the famous joke about problems taking down what people are saying, when one of the monks translating the Bible decides to go back to the scrolls, and comes running out screaming, "CelebRATE! it says celebRATE!"
stuff |
reporters should be made accountable for their actions, so often, when disscussing a particular scientific subject, reporters discuss the mainstream view and for good measure bring in this bearded nutcase to discuss his highly controversial but completely improbable take on the situation. To the layman (or woman), this would appear the such a view point is equally as valid as the mainstream view. Take for example global warming, a touchy subject at the best of times. For many years, the vast majority of the scientific community have agreed with the observations and conclusions with respect to the increasing temperatures and our CO2 pollution. However, news reporters always, and I mean always, included a reference to the lone few individuals who thought otherwise. This might be down to journalistic traditions which seek to examine all view points but when it comes to accurately portraying the true state of the science, it is grossly distorted.
prepare the survey weasels.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Journalsim, noun 1) the ill-advised idea that someone with half an English degree and an ethics course can accurately and authoritatively report on highly technical fields with which he or she has absolutely no practical experience and whose understanding is likely more influenced by personal experience and/or bias than objective research.
2) Modern interpretation - brief incomplete statement of fact taken out of context combined with opinionated rambling.
Ask any lawyer. Doctor. Engineer. ANYONE. They will all say the same thing - journalists get it wrong more often than right.
How on earth we as a society have allowed these people to become the gatekeepers to knowledge is beyond me.
"Let's go burn down the observatory so this will never happen again!"
pool with neutron stars then maybe the reporter is correct?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Let's see, (1) first there were the reports of a huge UFO hovering over parts of Texas.
(2) Then there were reports that NASA had tasked ALL their space transmission-reception dishes to "look" for a space probe that got lost; this of course delayed the reception of pictures from the Mercury probe.
(3) Now there is the report of SETI receiving transmissions from space aliens.
Could it all be related?
Well, it is possible, however improbable, that we could be visited by extraterrestrial aliens in our lifetime, isn't it?
See... he's the messiah!
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
SPIDER PIG http://tn3-1.deviantart.com/fs18/300W/f/2007/220/5/3/Spider_Pig___Color_by_Ionahipri.png
Those who live by the sword, get shot by those who live by the gun...
Thousands of science stories published in a wide variety of media are faithful to the research, yet still interesting and topical. Still, one of the hardest things about science journalism is convincing the scientists you want to interview that you'll report accurately on their work.
And then some jackass like this comes along and pees in the pool. I hope he was fired, at least.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
This is sometimes extremely difficult because when you are a journalist, if you make mistakes, they end up in print for everyone to see, with your name attached. But it's better to make mistakes, and correct them in humility, than to let your source write your story for you.
I've worked as a journalist for nearly seven years, and I've made some doozie mistakes, and corrected them. But I have never let a source control my story. And you know what? I've never had one refuse to be interviewed again, even if the story was critical of them. The most I will do is read back their quotes to them, and tell them in what light I am presenting them. But giving them editorial control over your story is a bad idea.
One last thing - the SETI reporter made a big, stupid mistake. It's a good thing the summaries around here are always so accurate, isn't it?
What you get with that scenario is news written by hobbyists, which is not necessarily bad, but they are only writing about what they find interesting. Which explains why Wikipedia has more information about He-Man and the Masters of the Universe than string theory.
And besides, the pay in journalism is shitty enough now, you're not going to get very skilled writers/researchers/thinkers for part-time wages. Unless you outsource reporting to India, which has already been done (http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story3306.shtml)
But people want news now, they want it accurate, and they want it free. Just remember you get what you pay for.
Local Officials helping thanks is. Guantanamo beds, current using adequate has.
Squirrel!
Proof that science is a good thing, news reporting is a good thing, but mixing both together not necessarily...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
http://meat.tamu.edu/beefgrading.html
One of my friends owns three of the McDonalds franchises here in our city. About four times a year he and his wife throw big cookouts/picnic/keg parties at his lake cabin for all his friends, and of course, he always grabs a few boxes of meat from one of his McD restaurants, along with all the rest of the stuff needed to make hamburgers. I always end up getting elected as one of the cooks, and we grill the patties on regular ordinary propane grills, and the grease just pours out of the meat, making it very hard to cook over an open flame without making big grease fires. I think these pre-formed patties must be made from like 75/25 percent lean ground beef. It took me quite a while to figure out the proper flame setting and get the hang of how to grill it without setting it on fire, but yet get most of the grease cooked out, and still end up with medium to medium-well burgers, which really do taste great, and have just the right amount of grease left in them to keep them juicy. I much rather prefer grilling meat thats 85/15 instead, but hey, when the rich friend is providing all the food and beer for free, you can't bitch.
...and nobody here that I know had even heard about these alleged UFO sightings until after these news stories just came out. Usually something like a UFO sighting would spread like wildfire gossip in such a small town as this, but instead actually everybody is wondering WTF is this crap all about? And who are all the nuts reporting it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Same difference. They want to keep us looking at the sky while they install manacles around us on the ground. They've even found a tinfoil hat exploit. Trust No One
I already said that!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Journailists are also being pushed harder and harder for more dramatic images (entertainment value) with embedded TV crews etc. This allows the military etc to manipulate the TV networks etc very easily: show what we want you to show or else your crew will be embedded with the folks washing trucks; instead of sending back dramatic images of fire-fights they'll send back images of soap suds.
Ain't press freedom a great thing!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Life is very unlikely. It is very improbable. SETI will never find anything because even the universe is huge beyond understanding, the unprobability of life elsewhere is larger still. The probability of us ever communicating with this unprobable life elsewhere is equal to 0.
Meh.
Abandon All Hope. The Aliens have landed.
Mulder and Scully will save us. After all, it has been done before nah !
People should LISTEN. Journalists have a big responsibility. Imagine he misunderstood what a world-leader said and cause a war between nations.
Visit http://www.kaizenlog.com
If aliens were sending strong signals in our direction I would hope very much that they would stay at a safe distance. Being near colliding neutron stars is not very healthy...
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.