Billionaire Technologist Accuses NASA Asteroid Mission of Bad Statistics (sciencemag.org) 207
Taco Cowboy quotes a report from Science Magazine: Nathan Myhrvold, ex-CTO of Microsoft, is accusing NASA of providing bad statistics on asteroid size. Mr. Myhrvold alleged that scientists using a prominent NASA space telescope have made fundamental mistakes in their assessment of the size of more than 157,000 asteroids they have observed. In a paper posted to the arXiv.org e-print repository on 22 May, Myhrvold takes aim at the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a space telescope launched in 2009, and a follow-on mission, NEOWISE, which together are responsible for the discovery of more asteroids than any other observatory. Yet Myhrvold says that the WISE and NEOWISE teams' papers are riddled with statistical missteps. "None of their results can be replicated," he tells ScienceInsider. "I found one irregularity after another" Myhrvold says the NASA teams have made mistakes, such as ignoring the margin of error introduced when extrapolating from a small sample size to an entire population. They also neglected to include Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation in their thermal models of the asteroids. Based on his own models, Myhrvold says that errors in the asteroid diameters based on WISE data should be 30%. In some cases, the size errors rise to as large as 300%. "Asteroids are more variable than we thought they were," he says. He has submitted the paper to the journal Icarus for review. However, the WISE and NEOWISE teams are standing by their results, and say that Myhrvold's criticism should be dismissed. "For every mistake I found in his paper, if I got a bounty, I would be rich," says Ned Wright, the principal investigator for WISE at the University of California, Los Angeles. Wright says that WISE's data match very well with two other infrared telescopes, AKARI and IRAS. To find out how accurately those infrared data determine the size of an asteroid, scientists have to calibrate them with radar observations, other observations made when asteroids pass in front of distant stars, and observations made by spacecraft up close. When they do that, Wright says, WISE's size errors end up at roughly 15%. Wright says his team doesn't have Myhrvold's computer codes, "so we don't know why he's screwing up." But Wright archly noted that Myhrvold once worked at Microsoft, so "is responsible in part for a lot of bad software."
Myhrvold? (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't that this patent troll [wikipedia.org]?
Re:Myhrvold? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't that this patent troll [wikipedia.org]?
Yes, he turned to the Dark Side. I have nothing but revulsion for the disgusting douche that Myhrvold has become.
There is a lot of misinformation below. Myhrvold was, in fact, a huge part of the development of the Win32 API, essentially the architect. Win32 is and was Windows. I understand he also pushed to have that little code snippet at the bottom of all the official API documentation that was shipped with many MS products and more. That documentation ended up in all kids of things including the Borland C++ compiler, competing products, et cetera. Anyone old enough to remember what developing professionally for Windows was like in the early nineties should remember how helpful Win32 and that documentation was.
Apparently working for and observing uber-douches like Gates and Ballmer convinced Myhrvold to become a true Piece of Shit(r)(c) bad human being and go the route of a revolting Patent Troll, one of the worst. I used to practically worship the guy, his work, and his story. That old saying of "never meet your heroes" is oh so true. I wish nothing but the worst for what he is now, a complete failure, in every sense of the word. He is such a fool now, he is doing low-life crap like this article recounts. Pathetic.
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Ouch! (Score:5, Insightful)
But Wright archly noted that Myhrvold once worked at Microsoft, so "is responsible in part for a lot of bad software."
That hurts.
Here's a link to the paper [arxiv.org]. Seriously, does this guy think the WISE team are a bunch of idiots? I'm personally not qualfied to judge the details of the physical arguments in Myhrvold's paper, but I would give it high probability that he's full of shit.
A new class of rich assholes (Score:2, Insightful)
I think we're witnessing a new class of rich assholes who think they're superman or something. Where money is a substitute for intellect, beauty or inspiration.
Disgusting, but also scary. A danger to society as a whole.
Watch them meeting at Davos to "solve the big problems of humankind". Barf.
Re:A new class of rich assholes (Score:5, Insightful)
" we're witnessing a new class of rich assholes who think they're superman or something"
er, no, that class is as old as civilization. We used to call them kings or lords.
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Well, the role models have somewhat changed....I personally blame Marvel and R.D. Junior [wink:)] - now every rich guy thinks he is Tony Stark.
How did it go - "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist" Yhea, right....
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I think we need to call them sociopaths.
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No, Kings and Lords were a lot more honest than that at the beginning. They were warriors and warlords. Only later did they get on the pretense bandwagon about the Divine Right of Kings and that twaddle because civilization had rendered their services obsolete and they needed to justify their palaces, mistresses and gold-plated everything.
What you are seeing in this article is what is known as a rich dilettante, which is a fairly old trope as well. They're just getting more press now.
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Maybe so, but he wrote a really crappy asteroid paper.
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Maybe so, but he wrote a really crappy asteroid paper.
You're missing the Long Play. In about 12 months, Intellectual Ventures is going to sue Atari for all profits from the game Asteroids.
Mark your calendars.
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I think we're witnessing a new class of rich assholes who think they're superman or something.
Not Superman. Maybe he's trying for Tony Stark. The closer (though obscure) parallel that came to mind was the wealthy industrialist Tim Hamner from the novel Lucifer's Hammer [wikipedia.org].
Re:A new class of rich assholes (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting rich requires a certain skillset. There's little or no evidence that that skill set transfers over to other areas, like governance, or science for that matter. This glorification of the rich man as some sort of Nietzschean superman is absurd.
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Getting rich requires a certain skillset.
Such as being born to the right parents.
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Sure it isn't arxiv.org [arxiv.org]?
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Sure it isn't arxiv.org [arxiv.org]?
Whoops. I stand corrected.
Re:Ouch! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also a cheap-shot that has nothing to do with the topic. An ad hominem if there ever was one. I admit it's a tempting one, but it's not very classy, and ultimately contra productive. He should stick to the science, stuff like this makes it look like Myhrvold is on to something.
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It's also a cheap-shot that has nothing to do with the topic. An ad hominem if there ever was one. I admit it's a tempting one, but it's not very classy, and ultimately contra productive. He should stick to the science, stuff like this makes it look like Myhrvold is on to something.
Nothing says you can't top off your substantive criticism with a bit of style.
Myhrvold is undeniably a smart guy, but that doesn't make him immune from doing something stupid. He's basically claiming that in his spare time he created a better model than a dedicated group at NASA and has found errors throughout their published work.
Now that's possible, NASA employs humans and humans sometimes screw up, but for him to be right a lot of different people and groups need to have screwed up together, for him to b
Greed (Score:2)
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Did you miss the part where he says WISE estimates agree with radar measurements much better than Myhrvold predicts they should? It's in the summary....
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, Myhrvold made verifiable claims and corrections, whereas the NASA guys basically just went full ad hominem.
1. The NASA WISE team released all their data to the public, and publish their results in peer-reviewed journals. The whole reason he can do this analysis is because they are open with the data. I think it's a little disingenuous to say that they don't make "verifiable claims and corrections."
On the other hand, Myhrvold has not made verifiable claims, and hasn't published in peer-reviewed journals. He says he's done a reanalysis, but according to the article: "Wright says his team doesn’t have Myhrvold’s computer codes, “so we don’t know why he’s screwing up.”
2. What NASA guys are "basically full ad hominem"? In the article cited, there was one-- count it, one-- snarky comment. Which I think was deserved.
I can't say who's right either, but I think NASA is showing a serious lack of professionalism.
You know, sometimes you get tired of people who basically don't seem to know anything about a subject telling you that you are completely wrong and don't know what you're doing. One guy made one snarky comment. Give them a little slack, "NASA guys" are human, too.
Shit happens, and yes, it's possible that someone outside the inner circle calls you up on it.
And crackpots happen, and yes, it's possible that somebody who is completely full of confidence but doesn't really know the field and has never done this kind of analysis before is full of s**t.
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doesn't really know the field and has never done this kind of analysis before is full of s**t.
He has a Phd in the subject from Princeton and worked under Stephen Hawking.
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Which doesn't mean his analysis is correct. As it is no one has actually seen the full analysis, and what's more NASA has confirmation from other data sources which thus far he has not actually been able to explain away.
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He has never worked in this field, and (much more importantly) this paper is not standing up to scrutiny.
There is also the little detail he used his wealth and PR machinery to get this basically published in the New York Times, instead of sending it to a journal or at least a few researchers in the field for comments first.
In fact, from reading it, I doubt anyone reviewed it for him before he posted it who has the guts to tell him "no." That happens a lot with billionaires, which is exactly why they shoul
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it's possible that somebody who is completely full of confidence but doesn't really know the field and has never done this kind of analysis before is full of s**t.
He has a Phd in the subject from Princeton and worked under Stephen Hawking.
To my knowledge, Stephen Hawking has never worked on asteroids, nor for that matter, done any observational astronomy whatsoever.
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You are aware that Physics is a very, very large field and being an expert on the narrow subject that got him a PhD doesn't make him an expert on most other areas, yes?
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I really don't get the hate on this guy. This is supposed to be how science works. He found statistics errors before in science papers that have led to retractions.
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That hurts.
It shouldn't because it's a form of ad hominem attack. It's one thing to criticize his analysis and say it sucks for stated reasons A, B and C. It's another to imply it sucks because he used to work for Microsoft.
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Seriously, does this guy think the WISE team are a bunch of idiots? I'm personally not qualfied to judge the details of the physical arguments in Myhrvold's paper, but I would give it high probability that he's full of shit.
And your opinion is based on what? The moral and intellectual superiority of NASA?
There's a reason why people go to the former USSR to launch private space ships and satellites. And it's not that the NASA is amazingly good and flexible and cost-effective. They are the DMV of space, with the same arrogance based on state-backed authority, not competence.
Just looking at how the WISE people answer to his critics show that they're not used to have people challenge them, and just based on that I'd bet a dollar a
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Informative)
There's a reason why people go to the former USSR to launch private space ships and satellites. And it's not that the NASA is amazingly good and flexible and cost-effective.
No, it's because of International Launch Services. Note also that NASA is NOT a launch service (or at least isn't since mid-1980s), making this line of reasoning entirely nonsensical.
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Informative)
Well, let's see. I work in asteroids, I know the WISE team, I have read their papers, and I think their response is quite reasonable. The WISE work has been compared to other data by a whole bunch of people (both professionals and amateurs - the amateur community makes a strong contribution to asteroid research). This is not a static thing - there are radar and stellar occultation observations of "new" asteroids on almost a weekly basis. These are routinely compared to the WISE results, and to other NEATM results. This is a very active field, and no one group dominates it.
I have criticized certain areas of asteroid research, but if some outsider comes in saying "you're doing it all wrong," does not appear to be up on the literature, and makes a variety of basic mistakes in their paper, I would not bet on the outsider.
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I am, and you are correct.
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Except he's not being open about the way he analyzed the data, whereas NASA has been, and is also able to demonstrate that other data sets confirm their work.
longest summary (Score:2)
Not defending NASA on this one (Score:4, Insightful)
The worst kind of data problem is when the data appear reasonable enough to not trigger suspicions but are actually dead wrong. I've been there, where I had a result that looked reasonable enough that I presented it at a conference. I later discovered that the result was wrong enough to invalidate anything I had presented. The problem was a software package I was using, a programming and data analysis tool called NCL. Had a function worked as documented and in the examples on the website, my results would have been fine. But because of the bug in NCL that probably still hasn't been fixed, my results looked reasonable enough but we're wrong. Thankfully I discovered the problem before trying to publish the results.
NASA says their results look reasonable. However, if their methodology has errors, it might be a case of reasonable looking results that are wrong. I think it would be worthwhile to look into the concerns and see if any of them have merit.
The last statement in the summary is completely uncalled for. The ad hominem attack does nothing to defend NASA's methodology. It only serves to try to discredit the criticism. That's the biggest thing I have a problem with. If you're convinced the methodology is correct and that the concerns are unfounded, that's enough to fend off the criticism. That the critic was once an executive at Microsoft is totally irrelevant.
Re:Not defending NASA on this one (Score:4)
That's what I was coming to post. The personal vitriol was weird - particularly in public statements. That kind of talk is usually reserved for serial offenders - people like Peter Duesberg (AIDS denial) or Andrew Wakefield (anti-vaxxer) who ignore all data and plow ahead with dangerous opinions, tarnishing the academy and harming people in the process. And even then that sort of talk is reserved until much back and forth in the professional arena.
Re:Not defending NASA on this one (Score:5, Insightful)
The last statement in the summary is completely uncalled for.
Ned Wright is known to have a pretty sharp wit. Besides, Myhrvold used his notoriety to grandstand with the press before his work was peer-reviewed, basically calling Wright a moron. I would get a little testy too.
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The last statement in the summary is completely uncalled for.
Ned Wright is known to have a pretty sharp wit. Besides, Myhrvold used his notoriety to grandstand with the press before his work was peer-reviewed, basically calling Wright a moron. I would get a little testy too.
Sorry, I disagree. Wright clearly wasn't displaying sharp wit to use a grade-school Ad Hominim instead of pointing out factual errors. Scientists have always attacked each others data and findings with grand standing and mockery but what matters is whether the attacks are valid and not whether it was done nicely.
Myhrvold comes off as the better scientist so far.
Defending NASA on this one (Score:2)
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The real issue here is that the establishment does not like to see interlopers come in and upset their little isolated enclaves. This is as true of scientists as it is of politicians.
Exactly this
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Oh for fucks sakes, the actual analysis hasn't even been published yet. It's always considered bad form to attack researchers based on your yet unpublished work.
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The last statement in the summary is completely uncalled for.
Ned Wright is known to have a pretty sharp wit. Besides, Myhrvold used his notoriety to grandstand with the press before his work was peer-reviewed, basically calling Wright a moron. I would get a little testy too.
If Myhrvold wants to play the YOU-ARE-NOT-CREDIBLE-BECAUSE-YOUR-ORGANIZATION-MAKES-BAD-SOFTWARE game, he need only mention Mars Climate Orbiter [wikipedia.org]. Oops! See how that works?
Not to mention Spaceport Command and Control System (SCCS) [nasawatch.com] Doh!
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Wouldn't that be some beautiful irony, if the NASA research was wrong because of a bug in software Myhrvold's company had a hand in developing?
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Wouldn't that be some beautiful irony, if the NASA research was wrong because of a bug in software Myhrvold's company had a hand in developing?
Except 99% of physicists and astronomers use MacOS and/or some flavor of Linux....
Re:Not defending NASA on this one (Score:5, Funny)
Wouldn't that be some beautiful irony, if the NASA research was wrong because of a bug in software Myhrvold's company had a hand in developing?
Except 99% of physicists and astronomers use MacOS and/or some flavor of Linux....
But then again, 98.37% of all statistics are made up.
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The last statement in the summary is completely uncalled for. The ad hominem attack does nothing to defend NASA's methodology. It only serves to try to discredit the criticism. That's the biggest thing I have a problem with. If you're convinced the methodology is correct and that the concerns are unfounded, that's enough to fend off the criticism. That the critic was once an executive at Microsoft is totally irrelevant.
I agree. Or usually I agree. In this case the ad hominem comes after the criticism has already been discredited.
The same apply to the microsfot guy (Score:5, Interesting)
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The problem was a software package I was using, a programming and data analysis tool called NCL. Had a function worked as documented and in the examples on the website, my results would have been fine. But because of the bug in NCL that probably still hasn't been fixed, my results looked reasonable enough but we're wrong. Thankfully I discovered the problem before trying to publish the results.
A great example for why writing your own code may be a good idea. Or validating it against other results (using multiple packages, preferably?). Or alternatively, validating those other results with your own code. There's an old maxim that says something along the lines of "First you make it compile. Then you fix the cases when it fails at runtime. Then you fix the cases where the results are obviously wrong. Then you get results that 'look good'...and this is the time when you should get really frightened.
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Of course people make mistakes. But ultimately the only thing you can do with a result you think you've validated statistically is compare it to other data. In other words data "seeming reasonable" is an end point you have to reach; but while that is necessary, it's not sufficient. And you can never know with absolute certainty it's sufficient.
Now the other problem is that the world is full of scientific crackpots who demand that scientists stop what they're doing and pick sense out of their nonsense. And
This guy... (Score:5, Informative)
He has also attacked other researchers in other fields: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/science/earth/outsider-challenges-papers-on-growth-of-dinosaurs.html
Shame he's been unable to locate the stick lodged in his butt.
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Well, he's patented a "Method For Locating A Stick Lodged In One's Butt", but unfortunately he sues everyone who tries to use the method, including himself.
Coat tail rider looking for fame again... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nathan only got his billions by riding the coat tails of Bill. he did nothing at all that was impressive, and honestly from insight read online during those yearst he CTO was not as competent as he should have been.
Bored Billionaire wants attention, attacks real scientists with pseudoscience, news at a11.
Now if he actually give them ALL the information including his Excel spreadsheet.... I mean software.... then we can start to take him serious.
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He was responsible technically for HPFS, a colossal failure. He also did work in photography where he showed the same poor insights technically as non-technical photographers often do. He clearly has a huge ego and the ability to fool people; what beyond that is hard to say. Not impressed.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Coat tail rider looking for fame again... (Score:4, Informative)
From his wikipedia page:
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College at 14 I didn't start until I was 17 personally I think 16 should be the earliest.
College Admission/Voting/Drinking Age should match (Score:2)
I think College Admission/Voting/Drinking Age should match. I love how you are "too immature" to make reasonable life choices about drinking at an age you are making many life altering decisions. I finished my first semester of college at the age of 17.
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It's not just college you can join the armed services and die for your country prior to being drinking age.
I started my first semester of college mid-year just before my 18th birthday and missed my high school prom and graduation. Much later I went back to school and was older and more experienced than many of my professors. Just wait until I retire and go back again.
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As abusive as the patent office of their own system, personally I find it hard to have qualms with people who abuse the patent office in turn.
Any ways, Myhrvold seems kind of egg-headed to me. See you got your academics, and then you got your jaded academics who spring off into being intellectual-tower types. And if they spend enough time in their intellectual tower, recursively they become egg-heads in their own little world.
Myrhvold strikes me as somebody who picks his pet theories and in the case of NEO
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You must simply never have joined an upper-level professional program a University, as you seem completely unfamiliar with the term "academic hubris".
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I don't think parent was suggesting Myhrvold used Excel to perform his more involved calculus. Excel is very popular for use as a data ledger among researchers, for some reason. It seems like parent was asking to see Myhrvold's Excel spreadsheet where he would have the values of his various results stored; basically just like asking to see Myhrvold's experimental data.
Worth a large popcorn (Score:2)
Wright says his team doesn't have Myhrvold's computer codes, "so we don't know why he's screwing up." But Wright archly noted that Myhrvold once worked at Microsoft, so "is responsible in part for a lot of bad software."
See, now this is something that would be fun to watch.
science be damned (Score:2)
Re:science be damned (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we find the science too complicated? Too busy to actually read the papers? Too lazy to do a little digging? Never learned how to do the math? Never mind. We can always pick a side and run down the character of any and all opponents. It's quick. It's easy. It's fun. Science be damned.
Oh, please.
None of us, even the most scientifically sophisticated, is capable of developing sufficient expertise in every field in order to personally judge the scientific merits of technical arguments in highly specialized fields. Maybe one or two such fields, if we work very hard on it. This is why we rely on the opinions of experts. Putting every random crackpot who advances an argument on the same footing as established scientists in the field is false equivalence. Yes, every once in a great while, an outsider can point out an error being made by subject experts. But, 99.999% of the time, they're full of shit. The burden of proof here is on Myhrvold.
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The burden of proof here is on both sides.
Oversimplified, this is why your math and science teachers always told you to show your work. It's so that if there is a discrepancy in the final result, things can be compared, see what assumptions were made if any, and determine where the differences are at.
Re:science be damned (Score:5, Informative)
The burden of proof here is on both sides.
Really. What the fuck does that even mean?
WISE has publicly released its data [caltech.edu], and published multiple analysis papers in peer-reviewed journals [caltech.edu] . What, exactly, more do you expect them to do?
Someone ask Tom Cruise about this! (Score:5, Informative)
It reminds of the time Tom Cruise told Matt Lauer that "There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance in the body." [washingtonpost.com], and "You don't know the history of psychiatry, I do.".
The overpaid and entitled, with a pulpit to stand on and a microphone in front of them, will always feel the need to speak from a position of equal parts confidence and ignorance.
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What you say is true, but I'd just like to point out that Tom Cruise didn't arrive at this position by his own genius. Rather it's basically the premise of the book Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard.
Now, whether LRH's syntax for mental studies laid out in Dianetics is worthwhile is hard to say. If everybody came up with their own unique language to describe mental aberration, it'd be pretty hard for academics to agree. But then again Tom Cruise didn't come up with that, either.
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There is truth to that. Most people have no idea about the history of psychiatry, including this TV host.
True, and psychiatry is an immature science.
Additionally, there is no objective scientific test that can diagnose most DSM disorders
Most diagnoses are mood or personality disorders, and there is no instrument that can measure patterns of thought or emotional responses very well.
Gross emotional responses like rage are observable, but nuanced expressions are not. E.g., we cannot see specifically the pain and loneliness due to a lost spouse. Optimistically, this could be addressed by a decade or two of technological advance.
psychiatrists rely on studying behaviour, asking questions, and forming conclusions based on that
Ask a doctor how hard it is to diagnose physical ailments solely based on
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Oh, come on... (Score:3)
It's not rocket science, people.
Oh, wait...
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Does anyone know why this even matters? (Score:2)
NASA is talking about (and might eventually maybe do) a mission where they go grab ONE asteroid and bring it back. Once they find a few candidates, they will obviously have to send robot probes to the candidates for a close examination. No way to do it by telescope, before you ever try to move an asteroid you need to see it at extremely close range to see it's true composition, look for cracks, etc.
Then they have some plan to send a robot spacecraft with a shit-ton of dV to bring it back. (and so they ne
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Just because you can rendezvous/retrieve one (or even a few) small asteroids, you still want to know the overall population statistics. i.e. how many of what size in what orbits etc.
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Well, suppose you find an asteroid that is on a collision for the Earth. Is it 10 meters (probably not a problem) or 100 meters (a city buster) or 1 km (uh oh, we're in deep trouble) in diameter? You need a statistical means of determining its size to determine how much of a threat it could be, and a lot could be riding on the accuracy of that determination.
turnaround (Score:2)
But Wright archly noted that Myhrvold once worked at Microsoft, so "is responsible in part for a lot of bad software."
There was a time when Microsoft was in the IBM "no one ever got fired for buying..." position.
Now we have statements like this in (more or less) mainstream press, not just techie circles. That's a long way to fall, when having Microsoft on your CV is held against you.
Working as intended (Score:3)
Well, that's how the scientific process works. It's not pretty sometimes, but finding a mistake in someone else's work is how we progress. Sometimes people are dicks about it, or refuse to admit their own error.
Get out the popcorn if you like.
This is a question of facts and evidence. Whoever has the best conkers will win.
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No, no, just no.
I read the article, and I read Myhrvold's paper, and NONE of this is scientific. It's all very, very plainly about politics.
You can see me go through the process of coming to this conclusion down below, but just "no".
Asteroid Community Eviscerates Paper (Score:4, Informative)
Assteroids (Score:2)
Maybe he could put some Preparation-H on his enlarged asteroids.
let the reviewers do their job (Score:2)
Peer reviewers will determine whether Myhrvold's argument is basically reasonable, though not necessarily whether it's actually true. That's the most information anybody can get out of a scientific paper without understanding it. Truth is ultimately only determined by actual data.
Used Excel? (Score:2)
Wright says his team doesn't have Myhrvold's computer codes, "so we don't know why he's screwing up."
May be he used Microsoft Excel and failed to account for the various problems in its math library (like calculating the Ceiling and Floor on negative numbers).
He's not doing "astrophysics" (Score:4, Interesting)
Astrophysicist here. I read his paper, and it strikes me as an engineer's approach rather than an astrophysicist's. He builds up a very complicated framework from many, many assumptions and gets a very complicated model with "more accurate" solutions.
An astrophysicist learns where to make simplifying assumptions that ease the calculation and make the relationships clearer without sacrificing too much accuracy. The less complicated the model, the less likely you are to be wrong (Occam's Razor).
Now I don't know in this specific instance if a simpler model is viable (I'm not an asteroid specialist), but the difference between his paper and all of the other hundreds of astrophysics papers I've read was stark. The sheer length of the paper suggests that it is highly improbable that there are no mistakes at all, even for someone of his intellectual capability.
Now, couple that to the lack of a public release of his analysis code, and you have a conclusion emerging ...
Peer review (Score:2)
The peer review process is broken and everybody knows it.
To paraphrase a quote about democracy as a system of government, 'peer review is the worst system of review except for all the others'.
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Many studies are often tweaked to show results, where there are non, because in our society a result with "no, there is nothing new here" is considered a failure. Anybody seen a Paper with the headline: "We failed at [...] and thats why?" Or "Our Colleges are right at [...]"
I don't know where you get that from - but I'm pretty sure it isn't from reading scientific publications. You won't find this in the popular science mags, but scientific research is full of corrections and rectifications of previously published results; it is one of the main drivers of scientific progress. And I think you would be hard pressed to find anything less sensationalist than serious research papers - perhaps the annual report from the auditors of a small company would be less startling. Contrary t
Myhrvold might be right... but don't bet on it (Score:3)
chances are high, that he is right in both accusations he made in the past years.
1. He only posts in his personal field of interests.
Being "interested" is, unfortunately, no guarantee of being correct. Crackpots are all interested, that doesn't make them right.
2. He has no personal benefit, except for his own knowledge gain..
Translation: nobody is actually paying him for this work. Translation of translation: he's not actually a professional in the field.
3. He tried to contact the original researchers and asked for clarification, but got no real answer for it..
A lot of the public does believe that it is the duty of scientists to drop everything and give unpaid tutorials to anybody in the public who calls up and asks you to explain the basics of their field, but really, it's impossible; you can't. At some poi
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> > 1. He only posts in his personal field of interests.
>
> Being "interested" is, unfortunately, no guarantee of being correct. Crackpots are all interested, that doesn't make them right.
I'd call him more of an egg-head than a crackpot. Did you read his paper? And his pet theories are just that: his pet theories.
> > 2. He has no personal benefit, except for his own knowledge gain..
>
> Translation: nobody is actually paying him for this work. Translation of translation: he's not actual
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Really? "Bounty" is usually used synonymously with "plenty".
Is a single pfennig somehow plentiful to you? For most people it's kind of the smallest denomination.
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Of course they use the more direct size measurements when they are available. It sounds like those 102 are the control sample, in which they have both WISE measurements (IR light) and a more direct measurement of size. They don't need a thermal model for those objects. And when just reporting object size they should report the size inferred from previous radar or occultation if that is available.
It sounds to me like this guy developed a thermal model that doesn't work for objects for which the size is
Re:The big claim here is....... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's kind of an interesting take on it. I wasn't sure what his motivation was; it read to me like Myhrvold was trying to say there aren't as many asteroids in the regions in question as NASA was trying to claim.
Is that what you picked up from his rant? That he's trying to say NASA is underestimating the size of the objects?
(Deciding to read TFA & his actual paper, now, to see what's going on...)
[...]
Well, it looks kind of odd to me. In the article, he says he was approached by B612 but stresses that he did not give them any money. He says "they came looking for me and my millionaire friends". Okay, so is it safe to assume there's a possibility that Myhrvold has taken a personal interest in B612's proposed model and is out to shoot down their competition?
In his paper, he mentions Sentinel (B612's project) in a terse paragraph but just before that he mentions LSST in a sort of verbose fashion. Then he goes on to write even less about Sentinel, and there he mentions B612's search for private funding. So maybe Sentinel isn't his pet project -- maybe B612 pissed him off during fund-raising (or maybe for soliciting funds from him at all.) Which would make sense if he'd already familiarized himself so much with LSST and had already adopted it as his pet project.
He cites the National Research Council as having determined that "LSST offered the most cost-effective and lowest risk approach". He seems concerned that LSST won't be finished on time, and therefore now I'm guessing that he hopes he can prove the other projects wrong so that LSST's long shot has a better chance.
(Sorry, writing this as I read his paper)
A few paragraphs later, he complains that simulation code used by the various projects isn't available for public scrutiny. I have to side with him on that much. If it's publicly funded, maybe at some point there should be a fundamental basis of experimentation that's also publicly available. It's sort of disheartening to read that each individual project is working from potentially grossly different simulation models. Hasn't some academic body somewhere already come up with the best model for these projects to use? Shouldn't that have been the first goal of the NEO search community?
He also mentions that each project can also add code simulating the results that competing projects might come up with. That's interesting, too. It sounds like the entire thing is very highly political. How many teams are publishing simulation results that downplay the accuracy of other teams? That doesn't seem very academically sound, at all.
He then goes on to say what I just concluded (that it's not very academic) and says exactly what I was also thinking:
"Ideally, the community would produce an open model that can simulate the NEO search performance of IR and visible-light telescopes, whether based on the ground or in space, with consistent assumptions and consistent input distributions of NEOs."
My sentiments, exactly, and I'm still just going paragraph by paragraph, here.
Later on in "Asteroids In Reflected Light", he selects his favorite functions, does some integration, and then iterates that theoretically derived functions that might be in use haven't been applied to a sufficiently large set of data. He says plainly that he prefers to use an older standardized model that is no longer the de-facto standard because the newer standards also suffer from lack of experimental data.
So, wait a minute. He has all this time, why isn't he simply trying to get more telescopes to focus on supplying the experimental data needed to make the newer standard (H, G1, G2) more immediately useful?
Well, he's just going on applying the assumption that the data from a known less accurate standard can be relied on within some margin of error to show whether newer models are accurate or not.
It seems a logical assumption that the margin of error that should be applied to the older model is a wide open variable. We're talking about tumbling rocks
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Why not wonder why Myhrvold wasted all of his and our time with all of this, instead of creating the larger data set to back the more accurate standardized system of functions that all of these projects should be working from?
If you read his paper it becomes pretty apparent that this is a piss fight. And in fact the entire NEO search competition now looks really shitty in my eyes. I can't believe they're all out there waving their dicks in the wind, hoping to catch some loose money. What a failure.