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

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Sep 17 10:51:27 2005
Message-ID: <hraoi1530nl1uj82c741i1tuvtlstsp5ob_at_4ax.com>

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 15:05:15 +0200, Marco Langbroek <marco.langbroek_at_wanadoo.nl> wrote:

>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

<snip>

>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 These were unpublished data: the one single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same problem and might have yet unpublished results on this.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"There are suggestions that Dr X and prof Y might have yet unpublished data on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.

Why not do the HONEST thing and go to Brown and say "here, look at this data we have, I think we are
looking at the same object. Why don't we pool our data and publish together?"

This whole situation reminds me somewhat of the case of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.
After Wallace found out that Darwin had been for years working on a similar theory to his, Wallace
didn't sneak a look at a copy of Origin of Species (grabbing a few choice points from it for his
work) then rush to press with his own theory. Darwin didn't try to crush him so that HE could
publish first. The fact that Darwin's work later was the only one generally remembered is because
Darwin did MORE work, and was more through and detailed about it:

Read this excerpt for an article on Wallace, and see the similarities to this situation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace

Wallace had once briefly met Darwin, and was one of Darwin's numerous correspondents from around the
world, whose observations Darwin used to support his theories. Wallace knew that he was interested
in the question of how species originate, and trusted his opinion on the matter. Thus, he sent him
his essay, "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type" (1858), and
asked him to review it. On 18 June 1858 Darwin received the manuscript from Wallace. In it, Wallace
describes a novel theory of what is now known as "natural selection," and proposes that it explains
the diversity of life. It was essentially the same as the theory that Darwin had worked on for
twenty years, but had yet to publish. Darwin wrote in a letter to Charles Lyell: "he could not have
made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters!" Although Wallace
had not requested that his essay be published, Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker decided to present
the essay, together with excerpts from a paper that Darwin had written in 1844, and kept
confidential, to the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858, highlighting Darwin's priority.

Wallace accepted the arrangement after the fact, grateful that he had been included at all. Darwin's
social and scientific status was at that time far greater than Wallace's, and it was potentially
unlikely that Wallace's views on evolution would have been taken as seriously. Though relegated to
the position of co-discoverer, and never the social equal of Darwin or the other elite British
natural scientists, Wallace was granted far greater access to tightly-regulated British scientific
circles after the advocacy on his part by Darwin.
Received on Sat 17 Sep 2005 11:01:21 AM PDT