Rumors in Astrophysics Spread at Light Speed

[groovedaddy]

Dimitar Sasselov, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, lit up the Internet last month with a statement that would stir the soul of anyone who ever dreamed of finding life or another home in the stars.

Brandishing data from NASA’s Kepler planet-finding satellite, during a talk at TED Global 2010 in Oxford on July 16, Dr. Sasselov said the mission had discovered 140 Earthlike planets in a small patch of sky in the constellation Cygnus that Kepler has been surveying for the last year and a half.

“The next step after Kepler will be to study the atmospheres of the planets and see if we can find any signs of life,” he said.

Last week, Dr. Sasselov was busy eating his words. In a series of messages posted on the Kepler Web site Dr. Sasselov acknowledged that should have said “Earth-sized,” meaning a rocky body less than three times the diameter of our own planet, rather than “Earthlike,” with its connotations of oxygenated vistas of blue and green. He was speaking in geophysics jargon, he explained.

And he should have called them “candidates” instead of planets.

“The Kepler mission is designed to discover Earth-sized planets but it has not yet discovered any; at this time we have found only planet candidates,” he wrote.

In other words: keep on moving, nothing to see here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/science/space/03kepler.html?th&emc=th

[FiveGoodMen]

1. "should have said 'Earth-sized,' meaning a rocky body less than three times the diameter of our own

planet" ...

That's certainly what I always figured he meant.

Maybe he just gave his audience too much credit.

[caraher]

3. See the threads on the original announcement

While I interpreted it the way you did, most people who didn't think too hard about seemed to take "Earthlike" to mean something like potentially habitable. So I'm happy to see this clarification.

[txlibdem]

4. Words matter

When you hear a word spoken by a scientist -which is supposed to mean something- you should be able to trust what they say is correct and accurate.

These are not high schoolers or wikipedia contributors. These are our best and brightest, supposedly. I was one of the posters who corrected the error in the other OP. Word choice can change the entire meaning of a sentence. Wasn't one of the Mars landers lost due to a simple conversion error between imperial and metric units?

Let's get some perspective on the importance of being able to trust our scientists to know what they are saying.

[Nihil]

5. ... and so do the perception filters on the listener.

> When you hear a word spoken by a scientist -which is supposed to mean
> something- you should be able to trust what they say is correct and accurate.

You can (and could from the start).

He was giving a TED talk with an implied context and level of knowledge there
that cannot be assumed if you were talking to an ex-President (for example).
Sadly, this time, some of the recipients heard "earthlike" as meaning a totally
ridiculous idea of some kind of cloned planet at the same stage as our host
instead of being a simple differentiator to give a degree of comparison
(e.g., different from Jupiter-like, Mercury-like and Neptune-like).


> These are not high schoolers or wikipedia contributors. These are our best
> and brightest, supposedly.

Sadly, the people who latched onto the above idiotic interpretation probably
*are* high schoolers or failed Wikipedia contributors (or worse).


> I was one of the posters who corrected the error in the other OP.

Well done for clarifying the point to less educated people.


> Word choice can change the entire meaning of a sentence.

True. Speaking with overly precise technical definitions can also lose
the readers (albeit in a different way). Those are the hazards of having
to present information to an audience whose intelligence and ability to
comprehend the presentation ranges through several orders of magnitude
(e.g., from the scientific peers through the interested amateurs to the
untrained press and finally to those catered for by TV newsbites).

I'm confident that his choice of words would have been different if talking
to a group of schoolkids and different again if talking to a Royal Society
meeting. I don't know how he'd manage with an audience of drunken football
fans but I think he'd have probably expected a better result when some of
the audience are supposedly "science columnists" - "errare humanum est".
Actually, extending the last quote to its true extent, "errare humanum est,
sed perseverare diabolicum" - "to err is human, but to persist (in the mistake)
is diabolical" - justifies his action in 'correcting' the misunderstanding
with a polite apology even though it wasn't really *his* mistake that caused it.


> Wasn't one of the Mars landers lost due to a simple conversion error
> between imperial and metric units?

That's a red herring to this thread but there have certainly been plenty of
losses through "dumb mistakes" so far.


> Let's get some perspective on the importance of being able to trust our
> scientists to know what they are saying.

*I* trust him to know what he was saying. I'd also "trust" a hell of a large
portion of the general public to latch onto the wrong end of the stick given
half a chance.

Let's get some perspective on the importance of education rather than having
a go at the educated side of this (manufactured) issue?

:shrug:

[txlibdem]

7. I often enjoy debating finer points with others

We'll have to agree to disagree on the word choice matter it seems. I have an ally on my side, though, and that is the person who made the initial comments that sparked this debate, Dr. Sasselov himself. Here is a quote from this OP.

Last week, Dr. Sasselov was busy eating his words. In a series of messages posted on the Kepler Web site Dr. Sasselov acknowledged that should have said "Earth-sized," meaning a rocky body less than three times the diameter of our own planet, rather than "Earthlike," with its connotations of oxygenated vistas of blue and green. He was speaking in geophysics jargon, he explained.

Dr. Sasselov agreed that he should have said "Earth-sized" and not "Earthlike." But I know I can be a bit too literal at times and as I am not aware of any alternate definition, in geophysics jargon or otherwise it is possible I may have jumped to an incorrect conclusion. I'll give Dr. Sasselov the benefit of the doubt, mostly because he owned up to it. Gotta respect that in this day and age.

[TheMadMonk]

6. Indeed they do. As an indicator of the abject ignorance of the audience.

You are right, units of measurement and other like assumptions should not be assumed but spelled out in documentation.

However, a speaker does tend to assume that his audience's interest in his subject is accompanied by a certain degree of self education. The aim and capabilities of Kepler and the search parameters are well documented, and anyone who had halfway familiarised themselves with the mission would understand, as several posters here did, exacty what was meant when he said earthlike.

This is half ignorance, and half deliberate manufacturing of controversy where none exists for better copy.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. That son of a bitch. When he said earthlike, I thought he meant earthlike.

Like, you know, exactly like earth only if the Romans had won and they had gladiators on 1960s TV games shows.

Scientists is dumb.