[X] My Assistant

[imran]

Jason,

Are you really shutting down this site? I must say I'm really sad to hear this. (((
It was one of my favorite sites and I relied on it for up-to-date news on Titan and the Cassini Mission. I just want to commend you for your great work and hope you keep providing us with your valuable insights here. Keep up the good work Jason!

[volcanopele]

Yes, it is being shut down. I feel that shutting the site is probably the best move I can make at this point. I know it was popular (or become quite popular). At that was part of the problem...

[David]

Jason,

Are you really shutting down this site?  I must say I'm really sad to hear this.  (((
It was one of my favorite sites and I relied on it for up-to-date news on Titan and the Cassini Mission.  I just want to commend you for your great work and hope you keep providing us with your valuable insights here.  Keep up the good work Jason!

This is very unfortunate. I wonder if Jason could leave the site up as it is, even if he can't update it; there's a lot of useful information in it. If not, would he have a problem with someone else putting up a mirror of the site on a different server just to preserve the information on it?

If Jason needs anybody to speak up on his behalf, I am sure there are a hundred people who have enjoyed and learned from his blog would would be willing to do so.

[tfisher]

I'm also very sad to hear this. I have made a daily habit of visiting your site -- it has by far been the most enjoyable place to visit to learn what's going on with Cassini. The mission is losing a great source of outreach! Thanks for all the work you put into it.

[mchan]

Yes, it is being shut down.  I feel that shutting the site is probably the best move I can make at this point.  I know it was popular (or become quite popular).  At that was part of the problem...

I enjoy your blog. Good info and commentary, and more enjoyable to read than the official websites. I notice the posts on the loss of data from the glitch, and the later recovery of half the radar data have been pulled. I take it this was insufficient to appease the powers that be, and a bigger gesture was suggested. Sorry it came to this. Good luck.

[4th rock from th...]

I think we should act. We should send an email to the person in charge explaining:

- Why we liked Jason's blog so much
- That it's important to connect with the people behind the mission (the human factor)
- That it's good to be able to put some questions about images and have some simple and honest answers
- With out this blog interest for this mission would be long lost
- It's understandable the need to restrict some information, but isn't this overreacting?

And sugesting a constructive solution:

- Turn the Blog into a official Cassini mission blog, open to posts by other team members.

OK, perhaps I'm being idealistic ;-) we all know how the world works. But if this type of thing starts to get worse (keeping all the data for themselfs) this forum might come under fire in the future.

[volcanopele]

I need to point out that it was I who made the decision to shut it down. I was not asked to remove it, but based on some comments I received, I felt it was best to just shut it down, rather than have to deal with potential headaches later on.

[elakdawalla]

I think we should act.

I want to act too, because Jason's blog is absolutely GREAT. But before we act, we should make sure Jason wants us to act. Let me paint you one picture of a possible bad outcome: I was working with a bunch of kids inside MER mission operations, and they were writing daily blogs about their experiences. But because they had this inside position on the mission, everything they wrote had to be vetted through a press officer at JPL before I could post it. At times, great chunks of what they wrote were censored because it was revealing discussions going on in operations that the press officer didn't want talked about in public yet. The censored stuff didn't have to do with anything bad happening on the mission, just everyday decisions like which way they were talking about pointing the rover, and which rocks they were talking about investigating. We tried to guide the kids to talk more about life inside mission operations and less about decisions and events happening on the mission, but for some of them it was very very hard. Nobody likes to write under the threat of censorship. And I could very easily see Jason's blog getting resurrected as something where he had to submit each entry for approval before it could be posted. That would suck. The ONLY way it would be valuable for him -- and everybody else -- is if the powers that be could agree with him on certain ground rules of what he could talk about, and then leave him alone to write, and trust him.

I'm very very sad to see Titan Today go. It has been such a valuable resource for me and I'm sure a lot of other people.

Emily

[tfisher]

I was working with a bunch of kids inside MER mission operations, and they were writing daily blogs about their experiences.  But because they had this inside position on the mission, everything they wrote had to be vetted through a press officer at JPL before I could post it.  At times, great chunks of what they wrote were censored because it was revealing discussions going on in operations that the press officer didn't want talked about in public yet.  The censored stuff didn't have to do with anything bad happening on the mission, just everyday decisions like which way they were talking about pointing the rover, and which rocks they were talking about investigating.

Out of curiosity, do you understand why the press officer didn't want this kind of stuff posted? From your brief description, this sounds completely crazy to me. Was the point that no scientific speculation would be allowed to be published before it reached the point of a refereed journal article (or at least JPL press release)? I can't imagine the scientists saying something like "well, we can't allow the public to see the actual process of science, just the final results..."

[Decepticon]

Oddly I knew this was coming.

It was on my Fav's list also.

[Jeff7]

I will admit that I'm not a regular visitor of Titan Today, though I have browsed it occasionally...and I'm rather astonished that you've been, well, warned(?) about postings on the site. Sorry if this counts as prying, of if you can't give details, ok, but, what the heck happened? Did you say something outright slanderous about top level officials' families (yes, that was sarcastic), or what the heck was it? Scientific analysis of public data? Is that suddenly not allowed?

Will the site content at least be preserved elsewhere?

[elakdawalla]

Out of curiosity, do you understand why the press officer didn't want this kind of stuff posted?  From your brief description, this sounds completely crazy to me.  Was the point that no scientific speculation would be allowed to be published before it reached the point of a refereed journal article (or at least JPL press release)?  I can't imagine the scientists saying something like "well, we can't allow the public to see the actual process of science, just the final results..."

I think that there were a couple of things going on. But they all had their root in the fact that the press officers were working very hard to protect the scientists and the mission. Two main problems with uncontrolled "outlets" from a mission: History has shown that the general news media are super-fast to jump on anything that sounds like a "problem" or a "failure" or a "controversy," and the most general news media usually only report on a story ONCE. So press officers -- and scientists who are media savvy -- get real nervous about anything that sounds like news coming out of any other than an official outlet, becuase they don't have the opportunity to get the story straight for the news media, and they don't want to lose the chance for the scientists to have their 15 minutes of fame, and they don't want the story that's out there to be wrong. If someone else out there, like a blogger, talks about an interesting rock, then it won't be "news" when the science team holds a press conference about that rock days later. Even worse would be if what the blogger said about the rock was wrong, or if the blogger reported on plans to examine a rock that then failed because of a fault with the rover, you would have either misinformation or the sign of a possible failure out there, and likely the media outlet wouldn't bother to correct it. So the press officers do have very good reasons for their conservatism, they're not crazy -- but sometimes they do throw the baby out with the bathwater.

--Emily

[exoplanet]

I just want to say that if Jason was "warned" by higher powers - that this is utterly ridiculous!!! Titan Times has been a blog that I daily visit and it will be missed.

To be quite honest . . . the activities of egotistical scientific fools (the ones that have probably warned Jason) are one of the main reasons why many high school and college entrants are turned off by pursuing a hard science degree. Data discovered by the PhD's is guarded so closely - nothing tantalizing or exciting is ever revealed prior to a scientific paper being published. To be quite honest, no layperson ever reads or subscibes to a scientific journal and if you ask me - to pay $30.00 to read an individual scientific article that interests me on the internet is ridiculous. When press releases are eventually published - I mainly just yawn as they are normally geared toward someone who has little knowlege of science beyond high school.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant . . . I just hate to see Jason's site go.

[David]

I'm unwilling to make pejorative characterizations of the officials who talked to Jason, only because I do not know what actually passed between them or why he chose his response. (My impression, right or wrong, is that what was at issue was Jason's expressions of exasperation at the failures leading to the loss of half of Cassini's signal at the recent flyby of Titan. These were not offensive, but may have created the impression that Jason was not blogging as a "team player". This is in line with a general trend, in business as well as government, to refuse to allow individuals a right to interests or expressions in the public sphere outside of what is permitted by their employer; for instance, some department has refused to hire individuals that blog about anything, on the grounds that someday they might ultimately blog something that reflects poorly on their employer. But I digress.)
However, I think that exoplanet's statements, shorn of certain expressions, have some merit. Much ink is spilt on how science is represented to a mythical body of persons misleadingly called "schoolchildren". Presumably, a failure to interest children in science at an early age leads to adults who are ill-informed about and dismissive of science. A lot of tacit social critiques are wrapped up in these complaints.
I disagree with them, except insofar as "schoolchildren" may stand as a cypher for some more relevant demographic. I think that a disinterest in scientific methods and results comes, not from the way that science is represented to children, but from the way it is represented to adults. There is less and less available to those, like me, who stand outside the scientific or engineering communities, but who can follow any clear and cogent presentation on many topics that are not wholly technical. This Unmanned Spaceflight forum fills that gap very well; Jason's blog has filled a similar gap, though in a narrower field. It has, at present, no replacement, nor would I expect anyone at JPL to be very eager to replace it. That is a great misfortune, not just for us but for the space and planetary science communities in general; it cuts back on the flow of information at just the time when a steady flow is vital to keeping a base of support for space science. I for one talk about things that I've read on Jason's blog with people I know, and I'm sure other readers do the same; when eyes light up to hear about the latest discovery, that's one more person willing to support more such research. Now, I will have much less to discuss.

[Rob Pinnegar]

Data discovered by the PhD's is guarded so closely - nothing tantalizing or exciting is ever revealed prior to a scientific paper being published.

Research scientists make their living by publishing papers in peer reviewed journals. The name of this game is Publish First. If you are going to spend two or three months sweating over a manuscript, you don't want it to come out three months after someone else's. The silver medal isn't always completely useless, but most times it is.

When you're in that position, knowing when to keep your mouth shut is a substantial virtue. Like any other subset of humananity, scientists can be good people, or they can be bad, unscrupulous people. The bad ones just might steal your ideas if you are imprudent enough to share them indiscriminately. Such people are, fortunately, in the minority (in fact, in my limited experience they're very rare) but just like bad people in any walk of life, they spoil all the fun for the rest of us.

Having said that, I can understand where opinions like the one quoted above come from. They reflect very common feelings most people have about How Things Ought To Be. Unfortunately, human nature, in its recurring role as the ultimate adversary, has a nasty habit of crushing such noble sentiments under its iron heel. I wish things were otherwise, but it ain't so.