[meteorite-list] NASA Scientists Call British Media's Asteroid Hype Unethical Rubbish

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:00:11 2004
Message-ID: <200207291628.JAA03692_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://space.com/scienceastronomy/asteroid_scare_020729-1.html

NASA Scientists Call British Media's Asteroid Hype Unethical Rubbish
By Robert Roy Britt
space.com
July 29, 2002

A small asteroid threat hyped to gloom-and-doom proportions by British media
last week has left several U.S. scientists frustrated and fuming over what
they call misleading and unethical stories that frightened readers
unnecessarily. Meanwhile, a British reporter defends the stories, a British
astronomer wonders what all the fuss is about and another suggests American
scientists are too complacent about the danger.

The whole affair, over an asteroid that is almost certainly harmless,
illustrates the stylistic ocean that separates American and British media
and scientists' tactics in dealing with them.

Asteroid 2002 NT7 was discovered July 9 and last week was determined by NASA
to have six chances in a million of hitting Earth on Feb. 1, 2019. Using a
different analysis method, European analysts gave the odds at
16-in-a-million. Both groups posted data about the asteroid's possible path,
margins of error and odds of impact on web sites intended primarily for
other scientists but also available to journalists and the public.

At least three online British news outlets reported on Wednesday that the
asteroid was on a collision course with Earth. Several leading British
newspapers -- including The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, The Independent
-- followed on Thursday with similar stories topped by impending
catastrophe.

In a few cases the headlines and story leads were flat wrong, several
American scientists complain.

The asteroid was not and is not on a collision course, they say, but rather
it had a very, very small chance of being on a collision course. A chance
they were careful to point out would probably be reduced to zero with
further observations.

Indeed, by Thursday the risk had dropped to 3.9-in-1-million and was
expected to be reduced to nothing in a matter of days or weeks.

Similar scares have cropped up in the past, and scientists had admitted some
responsibility for not properly handling and qualifying the dissemination of
their data. This time around, however, under an agreed-upon policy of full
disclosure, the blame for any misinformation sits mostly on the shoulders of
the media, they say.

Utter rubbish

Last Wednesday, the BBC's online news site ran this headline: "Space rock
'on collision course.'" The top of the story read: "An asteroid discovered
just weeks ago has become the most threatening object yet detected in space.
A preliminary orbit suggests that 2002 NT7 is on an impact course with Earth
and could strike the planet on 1 February, 2019 -- although the
uncertainties are large."

"This is just utter rubbish," said Alan Harris, a researcher at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) who focuses on asteroid risk. "The reader is
told that NT7 is on a collision course, followed by an ambiguous
'uncertainties are large.' Uncertainty of what? Time? Place? Maybe the end
won't come until Feb. 5, or maybe it will hit the BBC studios and not us."

If 2002 NT7 were to hit the BBC studios, it would wipe out a lot more than a
few buildings. The rock is estimated to be 2 kilometers (1.4 miles) wide,
big enough to disrupt the global climate and possibly threaten civilization
as we know it.

The BBC story pointed this out, then went on to note that astronomers
expected more observations to show that the asteroid is not on a collision
course. Scientists remain frustrated, however, at finding these facts
preceded by what they view as scary misinformation.

Defense of the story

"Complete nonsense." That's what David Whitehouse, the BBC News Online
science editor and the writer of the story, said of Harris' criticism.
Whitehouse stands by his story and calls it "completely accurate."

"We put the words 'on collision course' in the headline in parenthesis to
point out its speculative nature. The first paragraph of the story says
nothing about the collision," Whitehouse said Friday in an e-mail interview.
"The fact is that 2002 NT7 had an impact solution on 1 Feb 2019."

Another story by the British Sky Broadcasting's Sky News web site provided
even fewer qualifications. That story said the asteroid "is on a collision
course with Earth", and lower down, that "more work needs to be done to
chart the asteroid's exact path." Even further down in the story is a quote
from an astronomer saying the asteroid "will probably miss us."

Neither article mentioned that the odds of an impact were small.

Reuters, a news agency that supplies articles to most major news outlets
around the world (the story was posted on Yahoo) was more cautious in tone.
The story, datelined from London, stated the low odds, but still said the
asteroid was "apparently on a direct collision course with Earth."

In fact, astronomers never determined any actual collision course, nor even
a possible one. Instead, they draw up a giant elliptical region of space
that the asteroid is likely to pass through at given points of time in the
future. If Earth happens to be within that ellipse, then there are slight
odds of an impact until enough information is gathered that the ellipse
shrinks and Earth falls out of the picture.

"I think that in the end it comes down the journalistic objectives, and,
perhaps rarely, to journalistic integrity," said Steve Chesley of JPL, where
much of the NASA asteroid search is coordinated. "It is unlikely that we
will ever see an end to pieces like the one from Sky News."

Doom sells, and perhaps no one knows that better than members of the British
media.

Make it sensational

Duncan Steel, an astronomer at the University of Salford in England, has
worked for NASA, conducted asteroid searches from Australia, and written the
book, "Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" (Wiley & Sons). He also writes
popular asteroid articles for The Guardian newspaper.

Steel says asteroid stories have become so common that in his country they
either make headlines or they're not used at all. Unless a reporter "makes
it sensational," Steel said, "the reporter on, say, the BBC or Sky will not
get the story carried: The editor will nix it. Ditto (especially) for the
printed media."

Whitehouse, the BBC science editor, explains it this way:

"Here we have a culture shock -- look at newspaper headlines and the stories
they refer to," Whitehouse said. "This is journalism, not a scientific
report. We want people to be attracted to it and read it. We also want to
tell them the real situation. We did both."

Doom-and-gloom may be more common to British media, but in today's Internet
world, their stories are accessible everywhere and sometimes fuel articles
by the U.S. media.

"Some American stories are just as dumb as the British," said the JPL's
Harris. "I think a significant part of the problem is reading British press
with an American mindset." Harris figures Americans tend to trust what they
read more than Europeans, who know a misleading statement when they see one.

Even the venerable New York Times got caught up in the frenzy. On Friday
(after Harris made the above comments) the Times ran an editorial titled
"Rendezvous With an Asteroid," which began "Thank goodness! Another killer
asteroid is on the way, just in time to take our minds off the stock market
and foreign affairs."

The editorial was partly tongue-in-cheek, but it clearly spelled out the
danger presented by 2002 NT7 and did not dwell long on the strong likelihood
that the rock would miss Earth. Someone who had not read the Times' news
story, which ran on the National section front the previous day, could've
been left with the impression there was a fairly significant risk.

Perhaps The Times of London best put the whole situation into perspective.
In a Thursday article that poked fun their competition while properly
informing their own readers about the threat of the space rock called 2002
NT7: "If you believe this dire scenario, then you have rocks in your head."

Damage done

David Morrison, senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the
Ames Research Center, also studies rocks like 2002 NT7, an estimated 1,100
asteroids larger than 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) collectively called Near
Earth Objects, or NEOs. More than 600 of these large NEOs have been found.

Like many of his colleagues, Morrison thinks the hype and inaccuracies of
the British press are a problem for just about everyone.

"The NEO community and the public both are harmed by exaggerated or false
stories, because they tend to trivialize the real search for hazardous NEOs,
and they diminish public confidence in the folks who are trying to do this
in a responsible and honest manner," Morrison said.

The following e-mail, sent to Morrison by a young resident of the United
Kingdom, is "the reason the position of our Brit 'friends' is unethical,"
Morrison said:

"I am a 13-year-old-boy and live in the UK. I was very concerned when
watching the news that the news reporter said an asteroid would hit Earth 19
years from now in February. What do you know about this? And what are the
government going to do about it? Please email me back with any information,
as it worries me and my younger brother very much."

After obtaining this e-mail, SPACE.com forwarded it to Whitehouse. His
response: "How can an article that is completely accurate and gives the
correct perspective about 2002 NT7, even if you only read the first few
paragraphs before the quotes from experts, be unethical? Those who read it
would not have had 'unnecessary fear' invoked in them. Rather they would
have come away well appraised of the facts."

Leveraging the media

The sensationalism perceived by scientists was fueled in part, some said, by
statements made by a handful of scientists who would leverage minor asteroid
threats for political gain -- to get a funding boost for the overall search
effort.

Nearly all asteroid experts agree that an expanded search program -- more
telescopes paid for by the United Kingdom or Australia, for example -- would
be beneficial. Meanwhile, most of the effort is funded by NASA, at the rate
of about $3 million per year.

Benny Peiser, a professor of neocatastrophism at Liverpool John Moores
University, is one of the individuals not afraid to leverage the press
against the politicians.

Peiser runs a scholarly newsletter that discusses asteroid threats and, in
his words, helps about 200 journalists "get the information in a rational,
clear, and yet sometimes controversial format." Asteroid data posted on the
web by NASA and the European research group, on the other hand, are not
accompanied by adequate explanations for journalists, he said.

Peiser sees himself as merely a messenger who shouldn't be shot.

Before asteroid 2002 NT7 had been reported in the popular media last week,
Peiser told the BBC this: "This asteroid has now become the most threatening
object in the short history of asteroid detection."

While technically true, the quote sounded ominous without the proper
caveats, chiefly that "most threatening" was relative to other asteroids
that also had very low odds of possible future impacts.

Peiser's quote figured prominently at the top of the BBC story and was, it
appears, excerpted to become the main theme of the Reuters and Sky News
stories, as well as others that followed the next day in British newspapers.

Peiser agrees he's vocal, but he considers himself an anti-alarmist.

"I always request that the information I provide to reporters should be
fairly balanced, so that the potentially frightening information is balanced
against the much more reassuring information," Peiser told SPACE.com
afterward. He notes that most of the articles in the British media did quote
astronomers and did draw their information from scientists, so it's "far too
simplistic to blame the media."

He also says "the British press just love these stories, but is almost never
'doom-and-gloom,' rather 'let's have a good time as long as it lasts!' It's
a very dry, yet healthy sense of humor that can see the funny side even of
the most serious problems we face as humans. The problem with many Americans
is they lack this light-heartedness."

Peiser does not think the stories have harmed the NEO community of
scientists.

What's the fuss?

Steel, the British astronomer and writer, simply doesn't see what all the
fuss is about. Scientists typically do their best to give accurate
statements, he said, but obviously they don't control the media.

"This is always like having a tiger by the tail. All one can do is to try to
direct the tiger's run as best one can, but one is never in control," Steel
said. "What's best, a wild tiger or one under at least a little control,
slowed down by us pulling its tail?"

Steel does see a place to lay some blame, however. Much of it falls on the
shoulders of politicians, who he says have abrogated their responsibility by
preventing the creation of a coherent international asteroid search effort.

"We most likely have bigger problems to face, but if there is a 1-kilometer
[0.62-mile-wide] asteroid due to hit us in ten years' time, then we have no
greater problem: not AIDS, not famine, not disease, not terror, not nuclear
war."

Steel says "an ad hoc and fallible piecemeal NEO community" is doing its
best. The United States does by far the most, "but less than should be
done," he said. And astronomers generally agree that by 2008 they will have
found most of the large (1-kilometer) NEOs and will need to build new
telescopes to search for smaller NEOs. No funding has been earmarked for
that effort, however.

"Elsewhere various nations have acted shamefully, disgracefully, most
especially the two countries of which I am a citizen: the UK and Australia,"
Steel said.

Jonathan Tate, founder and director of Spaceguard UK, a group that advocates
increased search funding, agrees that the unrealistic specter of doom
dominates some stories. He says scientists are trapped: "Withhold
information and we are accused of conspiracy. Release raw data ASAP and the
media either add two and two to make five or accuse us of scare mongering."

However, Tate said scientists who provide colorful quotes "are doing so to
generate action by the government, action that is sorely lacking." Tate
further believes that the spin put on the situation by U.S. scientists "is a
bit too complacent. They are beginning a campaign to convince the rest of
the world that the U.S. has the problem under control."

Asteroid hunters in the United States say they are well aware of the threat.
They readily admit that Earth sits in a cosmic shooting gallery, and that
one day the planet could be rocked by a devastating impact. That's what has
driven the search so far, a search first proposed a decade ago in the United
States and then undertaken by NASA under Congressional direction.

But the American scientists also know talking to reporters can be tricky.

How the frenzy began

"Perhaps we've all been guilty at one time or another of colorful quotes in
describing NEO phenomena, and the media certainly tries their best to
extract such quotes," said Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth
Object Program Office. "The goal, I suppose, is to be at the same time
sober, informative but not too nerdy."

Yeomans had a unique view of the whole media frenzy over 2002 NT7. He and
colleagues "did not think that this object warranted any proactive news
releases," so he was unprepared when "the media blitz struck."

Various BBC reporters from different wings of the organization called him
early last week.

"Most of the six interviews I did with BBC reporters Tuesday night began
with their assumption that there would be a collision," Yeomans said. "One
is then forced to back up and try to explain the real situation and the fact
that there is not really a story here. They didn't wish to hear that."

Yeomans then watched as the stories (with his cautious quotes often
subordinated to others) spun out of control, begetting more reporters' calls
and flooding JPL's online asteroid pages to the extent that at one point
even he couldn't view them.

Yeomans now says journalists and scientists both need to redouble efforts to
help the public understand how asteroid risks are determined.

"There is plenty of blame to go around," he said.
Received on Mon 29 Jul 2002 12:28:02 PM PDT