One Find, Two Astronomers: An Ethical Brawl

[Celebration]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/13/science/space/13plan.html

When a group of Spanish astronomers reported in July that they had discovered a spectacular addition to the solar system, a bright ball of ice almost as big as Pluto sailing the depths of space out beyond Neptune, Michael Brown of Caltech chalked it up to coincidence and bad luck. His own group had been tracking the object, now known as 2003 EL61, for months but had told no one.

Stephanie Diani for The New York Times, top; Juan Palma/La Opinion
Michael Brown, an astronomer at Caltech, top, said that he and his team were tracking an unknown object in the solar system. Jose Luis Ortiz, above, and his team members say they discovered the same object.
He sent the leader of the group, Jose-Luis Ortiz, of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, in Granada, a congratulatory e-mail message.

Now Dr. Brown has asked for an investigation of Dr. Ortiz's discovery, alleging a serious breach of scientific ethics. Archival records, he said, show that only a day before the discovery was reported, computers traced to Dr. Ortiz and his student Pablo Santos-Sanz visited a Web site containing data on where and when the Caltech group's telescope was pointed.

The information in these observing logs could have been used to help find the object on the Spanish images, taken more than two years ago, or simply to confirm that both groups discovered the same object. Depending on what the Spanish astronomers did, their failure to mention the Caltech observations could be considered scientific dishonesty or even fraud, Dr. Brown suggests.

[Bill McBlueState]

1. wow

I read this last night, and I just spent an hour password-protecting all the data I have online. It's the easiest way to share spectra and plots with my collaborators, but it would really suck to get scooped at this stage of my career.

[moggie]

2. Distressing

But astronomers are human, after all. I'm more interested in this ball of ice. Perhaps we should be looking for a giant Martini in the Kuiper Belt?

[electron_blue]

3. Two ethical dilemmas here:

1 - whether Ortiz looked at Brown's log sheets online, and if he did, whether that by itself is unethical (probably so). Of course, they shouldn't be online anyway, but there you go.

2- why was Brown sitting on his data for so long? 8 months is way too long to verify everytrhing. He was sure about it back in January, according to an article I read. He sat on it for so long so he could scoop up delicious "first" images, "first" spectra and other firsts, thus preventing colleagues from having a shot at furthering their own research programs.

I think both groups look pretty scummy right now.

[Celebration]

4. the irony of it

The irony was not lost on me. Why sit on information so long indeed? Maybe the lesson is not to hoard data, discoveries, information. Perhaps a karmic thing is going on.

I'm interested in the martini in the sky aspect to it as well.