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Billionaire Technologist Accuses NASA Asteroid Mission of Bad Statistics (sciencemag.org)
Taco Cowboy quotes a report from Science Magazine: Nathan Myhrvold, ex-CTO of Microsoft, is accusing NASA of providing bad statistics on asteroid size. Mr. Myhrvold alleged that scientists using a prominent NASA space telescope have made fundamental mistakes in their assessment of the size of more than 157,000 asteroids they have observed. In a paper posted to the arXiv.org e-print repository on 22 May, Myhrvold takes aim at the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a space telescope launched in 2009, and a follow-on mission, NEOWISE, which together are responsible for the discovery of more asteroids than any other observatory. Yet Myhrvold says that the WISE and NEOWISE teams' papers are riddled with statistical missteps. "None of their results can be replicated," he tells ScienceInsider. "I found one irregularity after another" Myhrvold says the NASA teams have made mistakes, such as ignoring the margin of error introduced when extrapolating from a small sample size to an entire population. They also neglected to include Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation in their thermal models of the asteroids. Based on his own models, Myhrvold says that errors in the asteroid diameters based on WISE data should be 30%. In some cases, the size errors rise to as large as 300%. "Asteroids are more variable than we thought they were," he says. He has submitted the paper to the journal Icarus for review. However, the WISE and NEOWISE teams are standing by their results, and say that Myhrvold's criticism should be dismissed. "For every mistake I found in his paper, if I got a bounty, I would be rich," says Ned Wright, the principal investigator for WISE at the University of California, Los Angeles. Wright says that WISE's data match very well with two other infrared telescopes, AKARI and IRAS. To find out how accurately those infrared data determine the size of an asteroid, scientists have to calibrate them with radar observations, other observations made when asteroids pass in front of distant stars, and observations made by spacecraft up close. When they do that, Wright says, WISE's size errors end up at roughly 15%. Wright says his team doesn't have Myhrvold's computer codes, "so we don't know why he's screwing up." But Wright archly noted that Myhrvold once worked at Microsoft, so "is responsible in part for a lot of bad software."
Isn't that this patent troll?
Sure it isn't arxiv.org?
He has also attacked other researchers in other fields: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/science/earth/outsider-challenges-papers-on-growth-of-dinosaurs.html
Shame he's been unable to locate the stick lodged in his butt.
From his wikipedia page:
It reminds of the time Tom Cruise told Matt Lauer that "There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance in the body.", and "You don't know the history of psychiatry, I do.".
The overpaid and entitled, with a pulpit to stand on and a microphone in front of them, will always feel the need to speak from a position of equal parts confidence and ignorance.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
The burden of proof here is on both sides.
Really. What the fuck does that even mean?
WISE has publicly released its data, and published multiple analysis papers in peer-reviewed journals . What, exactly, more do you expect them to do?
There's a reason why people go to the former USSR to launch private space ships and satellites. And it's not that the NASA is amazingly good and flexible and cost-effective.
No, it's because of International Launch Services. Note also that NASA is NOT a launch service (or at least isn't since mid-1980s), making this line of reasoning entirely nonsensical.
Ezekiel 23:20
On the other hand, Myhrvold made verifiable claims and corrections, whereas the NASA guys basically just went full ad hominem.
1. The NASA WISE team released all their data to the public, and publish their results in peer-reviewed journals. The whole reason he can do this analysis is because they are open with the data. I think it's a little disingenuous to say that they don't make "verifiable claims and corrections."
On the other hand, Myhrvold has not made verifiable claims, and hasn't published in peer-reviewed journals. He says he's done a reanalysis, but according to the article: "Wright says his team doesn’t have Myhrvold’s computer codes, “so we don’t know why he’s screwing up.”
2. What NASA guys are "basically full ad hominem"? In the article cited, there was one-- count it, one-- snarky comment. Which I think was deserved.
I can't say who's right either, but I think NASA is showing a serious lack of professionalism.
You know, sometimes you get tired of people who basically don't seem to know anything about a subject telling you that you are completely wrong and don't know what you're doing. One guy made one snarky comment. Give them a little slack, "NASA guys" are human, too.
Shit happens, and yes, it's possible that someone outside the inner circle calls you up on it.
And crackpots happen, and yes, it's possible that somebody who is completely full of confidence but doesn't really know the field and has never done this kind of analysis before is full of s**t.
Well, let's see. I work in asteroids, I know the WISE team, I have read their papers, and I think their response is quite reasonable. The WISE work has been compared to other data by a whole bunch of people (both professionals and amateurs - the amateur community makes a strong contribution to asteroid research). This is not a static thing - there are radar and stellar occultation observations of "new" asteroids on almost a weekly basis. These are routinely compared to the WISE results, and to other NEATM results. This is a very active field, and no one group dominates it.
I have criticized certain areas of asteroid research, but if some outsider comes in saying "you're doing it all wrong," does not appear to be up on the literature, and makes a variety of basic mistakes in their paper, I would not bet on the outsider.