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Posted by: volcanopele Dec 20 2005, 08:08 PM

It has just come to my attention that there is an article in press in Icarus, Modelling of possible mud volcanism on Titan by A. Dominic Fortes and Peter M. Grindrod. The link to the abstract is on http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00191035 on the Icarus website. Just click on the Articles in Press link. the article is the about half way down the page. Sorry I can post a direct link.

I bring this to your attention because of our recent discussion on publication policy with regards to Enceladus data. Now the modeling of mud volcanism is akin to Joe's modeling of plume fall-out. In someways the work is inspired by Cassini results that have only been "press released" but not published. But with some modification, it is not reliant on that data, which makes it a tad more acceptable. That is how the first part of this paper goes. the discussion part of the paper is where things get VERY hairy. First, one of the figures is a crop of http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06222. Now, personally used strictly as an illustration showing location, I don't consider a problem, though it would have been nice to be notified about it. What is a problem is Figure 5, an image showing a portion of the T3 radar swath. The figure shows an area that hasn't even been publically released as a press image, LET ALONE the PDS. And rather than just using it as a location identifier (though they do preform some albedo correlations), they actually interpret features seen in the figure Note to people here, this is an example of what NOT to do!

Posted by: Rob Pinnegar Dec 20 2005, 08:42 PM

It's good that the word about this is being spread around (to the users of this notice board, at least) but one thing readers should be warned of, is assuming that the authors of the abovementioned paper are even aware that they are "doing something wrong".

As an example: I like to play around with wavelet transforms in my research, and several months back had been considering doing some wavelet de-noising of a Cassini raw image of Saturn's rings as an example in a paper. Had I ever gotten around to writing that paper up (which I didn't, fortunately) this probably would gone to Signal Processing or some similar journal. The reviewers, and probably the editors, of these journals would most likely have been just as clueless about the accepted etiquette of the use of raw Cassini images as I was myself at the time. I would have cited JPL as a source, naturally, but probably wouldn't have gone too much further than that in the acknowledgments.

To paraphrase an old saying: Never ascribe to deliberate malice anything that is adequately explained by ignorance.

[Edit: Of course nabbing Jason's mosaic is a clear no-no; I had forgotten about that while writing the above post.]

Posted by: volcanopele Dec 20 2005, 09:01 PM

Yes, but this is Icarus, NOT Signal Processing

To me, I don't have a problem with them using a mosaic of mine strictly to point out a location on the surface, not to analyze. But I am not speaking for the entire imaging team, and I know for sure that there are those on the team that would have a MAJOR problem with it. Images on the public CICLOPS website, shouldn't in general, be used for publications, though perhaps if asked nicely, you never know. It's the use of the RADAR image that I personally have a problem with because they used completely unreleased data and analyzed it, and by the lack of a RADAR team co-author or an RADAR team member acknowledgement, it doesn't appear they consulted the RADAR team on this.

Posted by: Rob Pinnegar Dec 21 2005, 02:46 AM

Well, things can slip by even when they shouldn't, eh? Just goes to show that the onus really is on the authors. You can't expect reviewers and editors to catch _everything_ (although very frequently they will).

Posted by: The Messenger Jan 14 2006, 08:14 PM

Tacky. I can see why mission scientists are testy. I still want to see the data, and I want to see it yesterday! Eight years of waiting are long enough - especially for those of us old enough to see the short end of the candle.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 14 2006, 10:59 PM

Er, truth be told, it's the journal that's as much at fault. The authors of the paper will be, I presume, your average jobbing science guys, with limited number of papers under their belt. It's the job of journals to take the output of such folk and examine it in a sufficiently rigorous way as to allow it to be released with good grace into the scientific community. They do the peer-review etc, and one of their other responsibilities certainly ought to be not so much editorial, as procedural - more of a sub-editing nature: do the number of references add up, have the authors ticked every correction on any proofs, etc, etc. The journals do this sort of thing all the time, they're the experts, and should spot the errors made by over-enthusiastic researchers. If they don't, then *their* credibility suffers, and we change from a scientific process to one of rumour and speculation.

Bob Shaw

Posted by: Decepticon Jan 14 2006, 11:56 PM

I can't find the article or picture.

Posted by: nprev Jan 21 2006, 12:10 AM

Not sure if this is the right thread for this, but anyhow...

Just looked at the T10 encounter page, and noticed the following:

"Views from the probe and Cassini's eight flybys of Titan have revealed that every geologic process on Earth is active on Titan."

Is this an acknowledgement of active vulcanism, cryo or otherwise? It is a rather sweeping statement, to be sure...

...edit...sorry, never mind. I read the rest of the page, and they clearly state that they've seen a feature that might be a volcano...I'll buy that!

Link: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/events/titan20060115/index.cfm