I just finished this book by Dr Mike Brown of Caltech.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Killed-Pluto-Why-Coming/dp/0385531087/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300756965&sr=8-1
He is largely credited with the reduction of Pluto to a "dwarf planet" although he himself did not participate in the discussion. The book starts of by giving a window into what it is like to be an astronomer. He tells about late nights, trying to get time on telescopes, trying to complete a dissertation, and trying to get tenure.
The majority of the book focuses on the Dr. Brown's discovery of objects in the Kuiper Belt namely: Sedna, Eris, and I forgot what he named them but they were codenamed Santa Clause and Easter Bunny. All of these objects were considered to be planets in that they were near the size of Pluto and had more regular orbits than Pluto. Dr Brown tells the story about the discovery of these objects, the potential theft of this information by a Spanish astronomer before he could publish (he is actually very cordial), and the debate on the definition of planets.
Jocelyn Bell makes an appearance in the book as the primary voice against a second resolution to play a definitions game in terms of planets so that Pluto could still be considered a planet. The idea was to have "classical planets" (MVEMJSUN) and "dwarf planets (Pluto, Xena, Eris, etc). Jocelyn Bell gave a demonstration with a beach ball, a stuffed dog, and an umbrella that prevented the motion from gaining traction. I only wish that I had finished the book prior to her lecture, I would loved to have asked her about that.
I would encourage you to pick this book up and read it yourself. It will be in the Rockwall Public Library as soon as I can get over there and return it.
I need a good book... I'm clean out of reading material and this seems pretty interesting. I wonder if it's available in electronic form for my Nook... hummmm....
ReplyDeleteIt is available on the Nook!!! $12.99 ... a bit more than I like to spend, but I may splurge on this one.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting that - definitely need to add that to my reading list. The whole subject of Pluto's classification is an interesting case study of the problem of classification in science in general. An example of a similar scientific argument is whether to classify living things in terms of similarity in features (the 'standard' way, called phenetics, which leads to kingdoms, species etc) or according to the branch of the evolutionary tree that the organisms share (which is called cladistics). Ultimately, they are both useful in different sets of circumstances, but they highlight the fact that there is never really one overarching scheme of classification that works all the time.
ReplyDeleteDr. Newton -
ReplyDeleteI was wondering how you come down on the argument of immediate notification versus in depth study and publication in scientific journal. A controversy erupted over several objects in Kuiper Belt when Dr. Brown had lots of information but had not published yet in lieu of writing a scientific paper while other astronomers (possibly by nefarious means) held press conferences immediately. When this came out Dr. Brown was accused of hiding and hoarding his data. He contends that announcements should be made through scientific journals so they can be examined by experts before making its way to the mainstream media.
That's a very interesting and important question. I definitely come down on the side of Dr. Brown with a caveat. I strongly believe that the correct way to release new scientific results is through an approriate peer reviewed scientific journal - which gives an opportunity for indepedent experts to subject the results to rigorous scrutiny. In this way, we gain some confidence that the results have merit. Once published in a scientific journal, a wider peer review process occurs in which the whole scientific community in the relevent field can read the results in detail and argue the results in through the appropriate forums (the journals, conferences, etc).
ReplyDeleteI think the appropriate point to have a press conference/press release is when the results have been published in the journal. One of the major problems of releasing to the press results that have not yet been published is that all the details of the methodology, the data and the detailed logical argument that results in the author's conclusions are not available for scrutiny (by fellow scientists or anyone else). That means there is no way to skeptically confront the author's conclusion - we must just take it at face value; this is completely unscientific.
The caveat I have is that any RAW data from instruments/telescopes should be made publically available as soon as it is obtained, so that anyone can use it in a scientific study, to obtain scientific results, which can then be published and argued over appropriately.
I don't know if Dr. Brown was witholding raw data (which I think is bad) or information that results from some form of scientific analysis of the raw data (which I think is entirely appropriate).