Inaccuracy in reporting astronomy and science |
Inaccuracy in reporting astronomy and science |
Jan 8 2007, 07:15 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 117 Joined: 7-December 06 From: Sheffield UK Member No.: 1462 |
I have just watched the BBC's report on the newly created 3D map of dark matter using Hubble data; and it made my heart sink.
I applaud the BBC for giving airtime to such discoveries, but for such a respected organisation their research was awful. It's no wonder the vast majority of people are either bewildered or disinterested the the universe as a whole when the facts they are given are completely wrong. It's a shame that tonight 60 million or so people in the UK and many other people around the world were told Hubble shone a beam of light out into the depths of the universe and studied how it was bent by the gravity of dark matter billions of light years away! And this was a report from the BBCs science correspondant! I remain downhearted that perhaps the most important story of the week was reported in such a shoddy manner. Does anyone else feel space is being let down by TV coverage? -------------------- It's a funny old world - A man's lucky if he gets out of it alive. - W.C. Fields.
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Jan 6 2008, 08:46 PM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Hate to say it, but the continuing & widespread deceptive practices committed by these parties really can only be redressed by the IAU getting into the business and driving them out of it. 'Star naming' clearly isn't going to go away of its own accord; the only way to make it something real (yes, I do use the term loosely) for people is to have the IAU assign star names, which at least would have some sort of enduring status.
Of course, nobody's gonna call, for example, SAO 133390 "Bill Smith's Star" except the person's loved ones; still, it's a trivial effort to record the moniker, and who knows; someday, it might well become a true memorial if the record survives & the star becomes important in some way. As a charitable act and, happily, a smart business move, the IAU could accept a significantly smaller fee for the service (by not providing the claptrap props) and thereby drive these <unspeakably obscene epithet/noun>s out of business for good. You got my back up on this, Stu; it was heartbreaking to hear that you've encountered people who have been emotionally injured by these bastards, to say nothing of ripped off. It damn sure isn't right, but this is all I can think of to fix it since court challenges to the 'industry' have failed. EDIT: I went here: http://www.iau.org/CONTACT_US.25.0.html --and sent this: Sir or madam, I am a member of the online forum unmannedspaceflight.com, and recently the obnoxious new 'industry' of naming stars by numerous companies was a topic. One of our members, who is a local observational astronomy popularizer, told us that some people he'd encountered were literally heartbroken to discover that a star that they'd "named" for a deceased relative had no official standing. Clearly, these unsavory firms are not only deceitful, but also actually causing emotional damage. Therefore, I propose that the IAU should begin its own star-naming service in order to end this shameful, and apparently global, exploitation of the general public. This could be easily done in a Web-based schema by providing a random star from the SAO or other surveys and subsequently recording the chosen name in a database. The current star-naming companies provide elaborate certificates, etc. in order to justify their fees (which seem to be on the order of US$50), but an IAU service of this nature--minus the accoutrements as described-- could charge considerably less while providing an officially sanctioned name for the object. This is in fact the goal of these well-meaning but uninformed people. Given the apparently large market for this service, the funds acquired could be used for charitable endevours such as grants and scholarships for students in the space sciences. Certainly this would be a far better application of the results of this phenomenon than the current situation, which merely enriches unscrupulous opportunists at the financial and emotional expense of a great many people, and furthermore casts the entire field of astronomy in a bad light. Thank you for your attention. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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