Reinventing Discovery_ The New Era of Networked Science - Michael Nielsen [107]
Might open science lead to the spread of misinformation? Over the past two decades scientists have discovered more than 500 planets orbiting around stars other than our sun. These discoveries are exciting, but until recently, all the confirmed extrasolar planets were gas giants, more like Jupiter or Neptune than they are like the Earth. Hoping to change this situation, in early 2009 NASA launched the Kepler Mission, a space-based observatory that astronomers believed could discover the first Earth-size planets orbiting around other stars. NASA policy ordinarily requires open release of data from such missions within a year, and it was widely expected by scientists that the Kepler data would be released in June of 2010. But in April of 2010 a NASA advisory panel granted an unusual extension, allowing the Kepler team to withhold data on the 400 best planet candidates until February of 2011. That gave them more time to analyze the data, and a better shot at being the first to discover Earth-size planets. In an article in the New York Times, the Kepler team leader William Borucki is quoted as justifying the extension as a way of guarding against false claims of discovery by other astronomers, saying that “If we say, ‘Yes, they are small planets,’ you can be sure they are.” In February of 2011 the Kepler team announced that they had, indeed, discovered five Earth-size planets.
Although practicing science in the open is, on balance, preferable, Borucki isn’t totally wrong to be concerned about false claims. On July 8, 2010, the particle physicist and blogger Tommaso Dorigo used his blog to report rumors that the long sought after Higgs particle had finally been discovered. His post emphasized that he was just repeating unconfirmed rumors, but despite this caveat the rumors on his blog were picked up by the mainstream media, and led to articles in places such as the Daily Telegraph (UK) and New Scientist magazine. Just nine days later, on July 17, Dorigo used his blog to retract the rumor: it was a false alarm. Some scientists criticized Dorigo, claiming that he acted irresponsibly, or was just looking for notoriety. But scientific rumors are a staple of scientific life, the kind of thing that scientists talk about over lunch or in the hall. Indeed, it’s through this kind of speculative discussion that new ideas are often born. And so it was a natural topic to bring up in the informal environment of a blog, where Dorigo could talk it over with his particle physicist friends and colleagues. Given this, it’s tempting to instead criticize the mainstream media for irresponsible reporting. But that’s also not fair. Dorigo is a professional physicist, well known and well connected in the particle physics community, someone who could be presumed to be in the know. Of course the mainstream media picked up these rumors.
There’s a genuine tension here. Blogs are a powerful way to scale up informal scientific conversation, and to explore speculative ideas. But when this exploration is carried out in the open, there is a danger that the mainstream media, eager for a scoop, will spread news of that speculation, creating the impression that it is fact. Fortunately, this is a problem of limited scope. The mainstream media aren’t interested in most scientific discoveries, and for those few discoveries that are of broad interest, events like the Dorigo-Higgs incident will help make the media more cautious about reporting unconfirmed rumors. Although people are often cynical about journalism, most major media organizations are acutely aware of their reputation for credibility (or otherwise), and embarrassed if they have to make frequent public retractions. News of the Dorigo-Higgs retraction was carried by more than half a dozen major media organizations, many of which pointed out that the rumor was originally