[X] My Assistant

[dvandorn]

One concern I've been worrying, like a bone, over the last several years, is the very tiny bits of data, barely above the noise level, upon which so many new "discoveries" seem to be based.

We're characterizing planetary systems based on the wiggles of stars -- when in some cases those wiggles are so far down near the level of chaotic noise vs. solid, unambiguous data that there could be other reasons (including sensor-induced noise) to account for them.

And as we build fairy castles out of data gleaned just barely above the noise level, we base further conclusions upon "understandings" that themselves are based on far too many single-point data points pulled from nearly-unreadable noise.

I'm not arguing that all of these discoveries are bogus. I'm just wondering how far we ought to go in trying to pull information out of noise. And I'm wondering just how much some of these detectors are designed to display what the PI wants to see -- not what's really out there.

-the other Doug