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

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Sep 17 21:53:36 2005
Message-ID: <432CC87A.A4F7BC60_at_bhil.com>

Hi, All,

    Ah, opinion is such a flighty thing. I read Ortiz'
declaration and it all makes perfect sense. He's
a fine fellow, it seems, but...

    We often, deep in our concerns, follow a sequence
of reasonings, all of which seems perfectly sound and
proper from each step to each step, to the end, yet
when an "outsider" looks at the completed action
without knowing the steps, he may see things in a
light that never was.

    Stoss uses NEAT data, DSS and POSS data, to
refine the orbit. He never uses Brown's data? Wouldn't
that help refine it? Yet, 20 minutes after the times of
his own Mallorca observations and recovery of the
object, someone at IAA is accessing Brown's positional
data AGAIN.

    I am most curious. Why? Are they merely "curious"?
At this point, they have discovery positions (2003),
archival positions (NEAT, etc.), and current position
(Mallorca) of "their" object. Why check someone else's
data if you are not going to use it and claim that you
are not even sure if it's the same object?

    Of course, with Stoss' work, they know its orbit
as well as Brown, perhaps even better because they
have archival positions which Brown appears not to
have searched for. What do they need with Brown's
data? To me, it seems inexplicable behavior in the
context of their narration. In fact, with what orbital
data they already have, they can easily determine
from Brown's data accessed the first time that it
IS the same.

    If for no other reason than this, one should always
consider the appearances of things to others, whether
an interested or disinterested party. It is merely wise
to do so, as many a politician has discovered, often
woefully.

    Marco says, "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..."

    That, of course, is the "tipping point" issue, entirely
and completely. Ortiz et al. assert it, or at least imply
it; they do not actually address it directly. We must
*assume* it or not *assume* it, and when that is so,
one must expect different people to make different
assumptions.

    Science can be quite as cut-throat as any other
human endeavor, although one would never know
it from the public image of scientists. There is a
Nobel-winning scientist, in the past decade, in
a field I shall not name, who is absolutely detested
by the majority of workers in the same field for
stealing others' work by a variety of means, by
every means possible, in fact, countless thoroughly
despicable behaviors. But, he got that prize... and
probably for a theory that will be ultimately quite
discredited.

    If Ortiz made some use of Brown's data he will
not admit to, but really made the 2003 discovery,
it is, to use an American expression, "small potatoes."
Myself, in his position, would have mentioned it.

    Marco calls Brown's observations "unpublished"
and "unreported" yet also refers to a "published"
abstract of Brown's and to the "publicly accessible
website." If so, there's a reason that that the law
refers to "publishing" on the web. To place anything
on the web is to PUBLISH it, legally. So, we are
drawing a line here that weaves in and out among
various definitions of "publish," and that line is not
a straight line. Is the criterion peer-review alone?
Not to the world at large...

    Completely aside, that is why you aspiring authors
should never put your great novels-to-be on your
website. Technically, that is publication; and
should a real publisher ever want it, you will find
that you have reduced its value because they would
be buying "reprint" rights, which are not worth the
same as "first" rights. Just a tip...

    If I had been the SMARTS Consortium's webmaster,
I would have told them to make the front end accessible,
with the pretty pictures and the press releases, and to
put the Consortium's business under 128-bit encryption
and password protected. (It's never too late to do this,
Mike Brown, if you're listening, and no trouble. If the tiny
bank in a town of 1500 pop. can do it, so can Yale and
CalTech...)

    Other scientists may airily say, O, free and public data,
I found it on a website, but the law says "copyrighted
intellectual property..." It's a question of which frame
you view reality from.

    There are other approaches. The Lowell Observatory
Deep Ecliptic Survey puts hundreds of KBO's in databases
and literally begs for somebody to follow up on them. Many
are lost again because there is no followup astrometry. Of
course, an ecliptic survey would not have found 2003EL61
or 2003UB313 at all...

    We're just at the very first stages of exploring Trans-
Neptunian space. Five or ten years from now, this may
be largely forgotten in a splurge of discovery. I hope so,
anyway. And I think there will be a splurge of discovery.

    When 2003UB313 was discovered, I posted a long
(multi-part) post hypothesizing three logical categories or
populations of planets: Terrestrial (differentiated rocky/
iron worlds), Jovian (differentiated rocky/gas worlds), and
Plutonian, or differentiated rocky/multiphase-ice worlds,
giving as examples these big TBO's, certain satellites
of the gas giants, and Ceres. It all seemed blindingly
obvious to me.

    Then, a few weeks ago comes the study that revealed
that Ceres is indeed a thoroughly differentiated body, saying
"nobody expected this." I couldn't imagine anyone could
think anything else, ignorant me. One has only to look at
the "inventories" of the solar nebula to see that the principal
"trap" for the most abundant element (hydrogen) and the 4th
most abundant element (oxygen) is each other! There must
have been tremendous mass of such bodies produced.

    The implicit evidences for very large bodies is several,
bodies big enough to strip a big moon (Pluto) from Neptune,
bodies big enough to not be captured by Jupiter like Ganymede
(bigger than Mercury) was, bodies bigger than 2003UB313
by far. I "believe" (we call that hypothesizing, don't we?) that
they're out there.

    When the impact theory of the Moon's origin was proposed
(that's "our" Moon), it was modeled with a Mars-sized impactor.
It now appears that several Mars masses would have been
required. Has anybody ever modeled it with a BIG rocky/ICY
body? And the question of how the Earth acquired all this
water is still unresolved, you know, when the other Terrestrials
seem sadly lacking in kilometer deep oceans... (Going for a
swim on Venus? Good luck!) You don't suppose the two
questions are related, do you?

    (* Yes, the Moon is very dry, but impact is like an event
horizon that makes it impossible to know what the impactor
was like BEFORE the impact. Presumably, it was not like
the re-accreted Moon. It would require the Earth to retain
only a small fraction of the water to account for the origin
of its oceans.)

    You see, nobody seems to take into account the
possibility of a large population of such bodies in the
early solar system. But given the relative abundances
of the solar nebula, they should have been (and should
still be) the most numerous bodies. The largest such
bodies seem to be unaccounted for. They are not in
our neighborhood certainly.

    In the past five years or so, we've found six good-sized
bodies beyond Pluto. If I was really a dreary archivist,
I'd dig up the many predictions of nothing beyond Pluto,
then nothing big beyond Pluto, then nothing as big as
Pluto beyond Pluto, then nothing bigger than Pluto
beyond Pluto... Well, the trend seems obvious, and in
discoveries, this is predictively valid: if your number of
finds increases dramatically as a function of search
intensity and duration, you are dealing with a population,
not incidental finds.

    They're out there...


Sterling K. Webb
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marco Langbroek wrote:

> 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 09:52:58 PM PDT