Inaccuracy in reporting astronomy and science Options

[Explorer1]

This thing in the '(not) recommended' sidebar caught my eye:

"Sun-blown ISON comet remains harvested in Antarctic". :Groan:


The Russian equivalent of Weekly World News....

[Astro0]

I usually hate nitpicking but today I feel like nitpicking.

On the release: NASA Hosts News Conference About 10 Years of Roving on Mars it says:
"Opportunity is continuing to provide scientific results, and currently is investigating the rim of a crater 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide."

The way that reads, it's saying that the rim is '14 miles/22kms' wide.
It would have read better if it said: '...investigating the rim of a 14 mile (22 kilometer) wide crater.'

But I'm just nitpicking

[centsworth_II]

Are you saying that if I said 'I took the hat of a man six feet tall', you would think it was the hat that was six feet tall?

[stevesliva]

"Opportunity is continuing to provide scientific results, and currently is investigating the rim of a crater 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide."

The way that reads, it's saying that the rim is '14 miles/22kms' wide.
It would have read better if it said: '...investigating the rim of a 14 mile (22 kilometer) wide crater.

So the wikipedia entry on this says that post-positive adjectives are archaic or poetic. So I read Stu's latest poem commemorative, hoping for an example most poetical, and yet the opportunity on the line penultimate was squandered with "lost love."

[Astro0]

Centsworth:
Grammatically yes
intellectually no
and the indicated that it was said in good humour.
Language is a funny thing.

[dvandorn]

The funny thing is, the algebraic equation 14mi/22km results in a factor of one. But as to unit of measure, that factor is indeterminate. Either side of the equation can be rendered into the same uom as the other -- i.e., 14mi/14mi, or 22km/22km. Since it cannot be a radius of both 1km and 1mi, the resulting factor of 1 is thus indeterminate...



-the other Doug

[Tesheiner]

SpaceflightNow has, like many other sites, an article talking about Opportunity's 10 years.
Opportunity rover marks 10 years on the red planet

It includes a couple of pictures, the first one is of a dusty deck pan and the second one is, according to the article, "Next up for Opportunity: a climb along the rim of Endeavour Crater to an area known as Cape Tribulation, straight ahead in this view from the rover's camera". But if you look at the picture, it's part of a mosaic taken by Spirit at the top of Husband Hill and looking down at Home Plate.

[Ron Hobbs]

I am afraid this error came directly from JPL. At least part of it. On the press release page for the NASA Smithsonian 10 year event, they have the Spirit Everest pan image with a caption about Opportunity at Duck Bay.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-003

I reported the error to Kay Ferarri, the Coordinator for the Solar System Amabassador program at JPL and she sent it on to one of the PR people. I am not sure, but, I think the caption I originally saw was the one in the SpaceflightNow article; could it be that the changed one inaccurate caption for another without changing the picture?

Anyway, it is not always the fault of the media. But these errors can be very persistent on the internet once they are out there. One wishes that the SpaceflightNow people would be able to recognize the error and correct it before they posted it.

Ron, Solar System Ambassador since 2001.

[TheAnt]

I might be nitpicking on a detail here, but I cannot reconcile the term Exceptionally close with the supernova in M82 - 12 million light years away. That's to far even by astronomical standards.

[Explorer1]

Sigh...
http://www.scribd.com/doc/202863315/NASA-Lawsuit

[vjkane]

Sigh...

Bet this gets dismissed in near record time. But it was amusing. I had expected a different plaintiff who has a history of outlandish claims concocted from planetary data

[stevesliva]

That is shockingly coherent and shockingly ignorant of the speed at which things happens on Mars, all at once.

[JohnVV]

a very "bad" lawsuit
you can see in just those two photos that the pebbles were moved and you can trace the route the "doughnut" took . by the moved small pebbles.

yes it is a bit "odd" but that is it , just odd

like the bits of plastic that were found and the rather "shiny" rock

then there is that one photo that has ( what is it about 6) anthropomorphisms in it

there will always be "odd" things in photos

that is the fun of all this data
finding things .

but finding REAL things .

[Floyd]

On Astro0's 2014 survey, I had suggested that maybe the forum had been too hard on Astrobiology and that maybe that topic should be allowed. Sigh...probably not...I didn't realize how fast things can degenerate.

I'm a microbiologist who is very interested in what may eventually be discovered on Mars...Guess I'll have to be satisfied with finding molecular evidence for novel rare and interesting bacterial life forms here on earth.

MOD NOTE: Yeah, they sure can degenerate fast. Urge everyone to read the first paragraph of this post very carefully…Floyd nailed it.

[TheAnt]

I had expected a different plaintiff who has a history of outlandish claims concocted from planetary data

Yes there's one or rather two persons who have been advocating their own interpretations of various data and images for many years.
This is another person though, but yet I expect it to be dismissed also.

@JhonnyVV: Yes the human brain have an ability to create images or patterns in forms we see, nature provides us with a Rorschach test. Not so long ago I were confused with some fossils in limerock here, turned out to be bivalvia - almost embarrassed to say what I thought they were at first.

@Floyd: Yes things can go downhill pretty fast, yet when it is part of the mission planning or profile, the instrumentation and purpose should be possible to discuss. Else the forum go into the shady territory of censoring actual science.