[meteorite-list] re: One Find, Two Astronomers: An Ethical Brawl

From: Marco Langbroek <marco.langbroek_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Sep 17 09:05:19 2005
Message-ID: <432C148B.1060807_at_wanadoo.nl>

Hi Sterling, Doug et al.,

This is rapidly becoming a highly convoluted history now, and I urge everyone to
be very careful with damning judgements on either Ortiz or Brown. Initialy, I
thought (based on the information provided about logged IP's etc.) that things
were very wrong. Thinking it over and separating facts from assumptions, I
however started to realize that scenario's were perfectly plausible which would
clear Ortiz et al. from fraud attempt accusations.

In fact, this is what I wrote early yesterday in a private message to A/CC
editor Bill Allen when we were privately discussing the unheard of developments
around 2003 EL61, and possibe scenario's about what could have happened as seen
from various viewpoints:

" You find something in your data which suggest highly unusual characteristics
(a +17.5 mag TNO, who would have believed that was possible before this find?).
Being relatively unknown in the field, would you risk being laughed at? It would
not surprise me if this is why their initial submission to the MPC did not lable
it as TNO. It would make sense, when they would try to find out extra
information about recent TNO finds. Reading the meeting abstract for which they
submitted an abstract themselves, and which talks about the find of some very
large TNO's, it would be natural they hit Google to see if they could find
something more about it than just this abstract which gives little information.
Then you find a publicly accessible website with apparently more info on those
objects, such as positions. Accessing it, you discover to your dismay it seems
to concern YOUR object. Now starts a process of check and double-check: is it
reallly the same object? Yes, it seems so... So what do you do? Mind you, the
status of Brown's "discovery" is * very unclear* at that point. No MPEC has yet
been released for this object, it is not in the MPC TNO database, there is
nothing official on it.
If I were in Ortiz et al.'s shoes in such a situation, and knowing a discovery
of this kind means a much better chance of funding for my research and position
(which are always very dire here in Europe), I would not hesitate at all to go
public at that point, formally claiming the, and my rightly independant,
discovery with an MPC report leading to an MPEC as well as a public statement on
the find, before the actual meeting on which Brown et al. might or might not
give out more information. That you scoop Brown et al. is Brown et al's problem,
it was their decision to not go public yet so their responsibility. I agree that
they had good reasons to not go public yet (I do not agree at all with those who
maintain their "secrecy" would somehow be wrong and anti-scientific, that is
nonsense), but then they also knew the risks of that. Sometimes you win,
sometimes you lose.
The question then is: should Ortiz et al. have mentioned that Brown might have
yet unreported observations on the same object? I do not agree at all with those
who maintain they should have. These were unpublished data: the one single
abstract for a meeting that yet had to take place (!) only mentions a name code,
nothing there to identify this object with your object (or any other object for
that matter). Scientificaly, they therefore do not yet exist. You can mention
them out of courtesy, but there is no need to do so whatsoever. I am a scientist
myself, and every scientist will be familiar with the situation that you publish
something, and know through the grapevine that someone else is working on the
same problem and might have yet unpublished results on this. If you would have
to acknowledge this, scientific literature would be full of statements like:
"There are suggestions that Dr X and prof Y might have yet unpublished data on
this same [insert subject]". Everybody would see how ridiculous this would be.
In reality, you only mention this if you have private communications with these
other researchers, you want to give them credit out of courtesy (and/or because
their data strengthen your case) and they allow you to mention their data as a
private communication. And there is no obligation to do so at all (as long as
you do not use their results). Also note that I am talking of giving credit in
scientific publications, announcements or meetings here. Ignoring other's work
on similar objects/subjects is quite the norm in press releases for example. I
know of no PR department of a scientific institution that does not do that.

Note that here I assume that Ortiz et al. took note of, but did not *use* the
data gleaned from the telescope log they accessed, other than to check against
their own data. If the opposite was the case, the situation would be wholy
different. Indeed, Ortiz et al then would have the obligation to credit Brown,
and their actions would be scientific misconduct. "


And now, Ortiz posted this message yesterday (reproduced below) on the MPML list
(I did not get to see it untill this morning as I am subscribed to the Digest
version of MPML, same for this list by the way), with an account that actually
not much differs from my scenario above! If this is how things went, it would be
perfectly understandable, and it would clear Ortiz et al. of any foul intent.

As things currently stand, I will consider Ortiz et al. as innocent of the
charges made, untill definite proof of the opposite is given. And please note,
there are careers at stake here.

Read Ortiz story from MPML below.

- Marco

---- start of MPML message ----

Message: 2
    Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 22:13:40 -0000
    From: "Jaime Nomen" <jnomen_at_spaceguardspain.org>
Subject: Letter from Ortiz

Hello MPML,

Jose Luis Ortiz of Sierra Nevada Observatory asked me
to forward his letter.

-----------------------------------------------------

Hello MPML, I provide you this information which will
go to my webpage in the next days. The detailed timeline
of our find was given to Daniel Green, director of CBAT long
before any controversy. Anyone can ask him and check against
any other timings of events provided by M. Brown. I suppose
that this has been done by the pertinent authorities and
that is why no official request on anything has been sent to
us by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Here I will repeat the timeline of events and even expand
some details:

The analysis of most of our 2003 survey images had been
postponed several times because they had a different optical
configuration to the current one and many images had problems,
so only this year did we begin processing them.

On Monday July 25th the object is found in some of our
March 2003 triplet images. We do all possible checks to discard
image artefacts being the cause and to make sure it is not a
false positive. We had had false positives in the past so we
were very careful. We realized that the object was very bright
and could be the same one mentioned in a DPS abstract web page.
A regular google internet search on K40506A leads to a public
internet web page with what appears to be coordinates of many
things. This is no hacking or access to private information nor
spying of any sort. Some of the coordinates shown in those pages
are not very far from ours despite the several years difference
so the object could be the same one but we cannot really tell as
we are not dynamicists and we decided to submit the astrometry
to the Minor Planet Center (MPC) because the MPC is to make such
things.

On Wednesday 27th a report with our 3-day 2003 astrometry is
sent to the MPC with the subject "possible new object" as we
were not sure if it could be new or not. MPC reports have a very
short and specific format and are not regular scientific publications.
Astrometry of known or unknown objects is regularly submitted by
many of us to MPC and as I said they are not peer-reviewed
publications and have no references or bibliography sections,
but even if we had that option there was no possible reference to
give as K40506A was nothing standard and it was not even sure that
it was K40506A.

Apparently this report went unnoticed to the MPC and since we did
not get a response, the next day we seek help of OAM people for
precovery (that is, to try to find the object in publicly available
image archives on the internet) as we had no experience on this.
This requires orbital computations for which we do not have expertise.
R. Stoss was particularly helpful as a reputed person in precoveries.
The description of the process is very technical but I reproduce
it here anyway, quoting parts of his own words to the minor planet
mailing list.

------
The initial orbit based on the three positions from 2003 was a
crap, even retrograde if I remember well, but it was good enough
to find it on NEAT data from few days later. This way the orbit
was improved iteratively, the prediction improved, new frames
found etc. until the NEAT archive was plundered. The next step
then is to go to DSS, until back to POSS I. From all the 1-opp
TNO precoveries I had done so far, this one was a no-brainer.
The object was very bright and the "stepstones" were perfect,
i.e. the frames and plates were perfectly "timed". Thus DSS2
and 1 were plundered and some POSS I non-DSS plates as well and
both NEAT and DSS data submitted.

Additionally, as it was getting dark in Spain and weather was
clear in Mallorca, I opened over internet the 30-cm scope and
started to prepare it for the night, looking We had to start
before the end of nautical twilight because the object would set
behind the shelter soon. We did 30 images of 30s each and stacked
with Astrometrica in sets of 10 images to get three measurements.
Motion could not be seen visually but the numbers showed it moving
and in the right direction. So I decided we should report these
three data points instead of stacking all 30 images to get one
data point. One data point would have been better (better SNR etc.)
but I know the MPC folks and their pretentions
------

As a result of all of this the provisional designation of the
object was assigned to our 2003 images, but Brown's group received
credit through several means. It is evident that they spotted it
first, but did not report it to the MPC so the provisional
designation came to our images.

We have been studying physical properties of large Trans Neptunian
Objects for several years and have published more than 10 scientific
peer-reviewed papers on them, so we are driven by purely scientific
goals here. We conduct also our own survey since late 2002 in order
to find a few very large TNOs and report them to the astronomical
community as soon as we find and confirm them because we believe that
international scientists working together, collaborating and sharing
resources can boost science progress and do the best possible job.
In other words, our survey is not only to feed our work, but also to
provide the scientific community with objects that can soon be
studied by the international community with all its man and
technology power.

Jose L. Ortiz

---- end of MPML message ----

-----
Dr Marco Langbroek
Leiden, The Netherlands

e-mail: meteorites_at_dmsweb.org
private website http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek/asteroid.html
FMO Mailing List website: http://home.wanadoo.nl/marco.langbroek/fmo.html
-----
Received on Sat 17 Sep 2005 09:05:15 AM PDT