[X] My Assistant

[SFJCody]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mpml/message/15111

[abalone]

Here's something to consider

Brown argues that astronomers cannot control what gets called a planet. "Our culture has fully embraced the idea that Pluto is a planet and scientists have for the most part not yet fully realized that the term 'planet' no longer belongs to them," he says.
"Everyone should ignore the distracting debates of the scientists, and planets in our Solar System should be defined not by some attempt at forcing a scientific definition on a thousands-of-years-old cultural term, but by simply embracing culture," says Brown. "Pluto is a planet because culture says it is." And, he adds, that means his new find is a planet too.
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050801/full/050801-2.html

[Rob Pinnegar]

"Everyone should ignore the distracting debates of the scientists, and planets in our Solar System should be defined not by some attempt at forcing a scientific definition on a thousands-of-years-old cultural term, but by simply embracing culture," says Brown. "Pluto is a planet because culture says it is." And, he adds, that means his new find is a planet too.

That's a terrible argument. It would make astronomy one big Appeal to Popularity.

A hundred years ago, a paleontologist discovered and described a dinosaur he christened "Apatosaurus". His work was ignored. Just after that, somebody else found another skeleton of the same dinosaur and named it "Brontosaurus". For a century, in the public mind, "Brontosaurus" was synonymous with "dinosaur".

Then somebody ran across the original discovery, and made people aware of it. The paleo community immediately changed the name to Apatosaurus. Why? Because the first discoverer gets naming priority, and they weren't about to change the rules to accomodate Joe Sixpack's idea of what a dinosaur should be called.

If astronomers are going to "embrace culture", then they'd better be ready to call themselves "astrologers", learn to read horoscopes, and accept people like Hoagland into their ranks. I agree that it's bad form to unnecessarily confuse the public -- but if it's necessary, then do it. Let's face it, they're going to be confused most of the time anyways.