Posted on 10/16/2005 11:07:35 PM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy
LOS ANGELES - The discovery of a new planetoid has set off a bitter feud between American and Spanish scientists while raising questions about the ethics of Internet research.
The dispute began in July when Michael Brown, a professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, discovered a new planetoid in the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt.
Days before announcing his discovery, however, a group of Spanish astronomers claimed the new planetoid.
American researchers said they learned that the Spanish scientists had discovered where Brown was aiming a Chilean telescope by using an Internet search engine.
"This is a wake-up call for scientists," Brown said.
Scientist Jose Luis Ortiz says he and his researchers did nothing wrong and the data found using the Google search engine should be considered public and thus free to use.
"If somebody uses Google to find publicly available information on the Internet and Google directs to a public Web page, that is perfectly legitimate," Ortiz wrote in an e-mail to the Los Angeles Times that the newspaper cited Sunday.
The object at the center of the dispute, which is about 1,000 miles in diameter, had been photographed numerous times in the past, but no one had realized it was a planetoid.
Nerd fight! ;)
That's quite a slick maneuver. But I don't think the American scientists have much recourse. Such is way of the internet.
BTW, Nasty, you're on a roll with the great articles tonight.
well good point, but certainly nothing his mother will be proud of...
I suggest the planetoid be named Ladron (thief, in Spanish), in honor of the scientists who think this behavior is acceptable.
ctr
I don't know if I'd write this off as a "Nerd Fight" (I did laugh, though).
These guys spend their entire lives searching for something that may or may not exist. This particular guy gets close enough that he's gonna finally find his dream, and these Spanish douchebags claim-jump him. They must be real proud of themselves. Imagine bragging about this to your grandchildren.
How hard up can you be for an achievement to pull a cheap trick like this?
I would like to see the Spanish award ceremony for this.
I thought that "I saw it first" when out with graduation from elementary school. Guess not. Maybe they call it "reliving childhood".
This is outrageous. I'm sure no science professor would ever claim credit for another's work.
Someone needs to find the editor of this article and give him a well-deserved thrashing.
As written, this sounds as if the planetoid was discovered in some solar system, and that solar system was "known as the Kuiper Belt". Nope.
Or that the new planetoid was itself "known as the Kuiper Belt". Uh uh.
Corrected, it should read something like, "discovered a new planetoid in the the region of our solar system known as the Kuiper Belt
Would The Amiholes not have to have some sort of documentation supporting their work? Grants, log files, previous work, etc. Something would have to support their activity studying this particular piece of the universe? Why would the guy not keep this little thing a secret??? It is kind of a Big Deal.
But Mike Brown is incompetent, I thought.
Anyway, none of this matters until somebody plants a flag on it.
Sloppy journalism seems to be a constant in science stories, but it's the least of the problems involved here. I guess these "discoverers" should be awarded the Fidel Castro Prize.
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