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I find myself frustrated at researchers who get frustrated at non-researchers being interested at all in their work. It's the same as the hypothetical megastruc

by gp7 10y ago

I find myself frustrated at researchers who get frustrated at non-researchers being interested at all in their work. It's the same as the hypothetical megastructure; all the news is quite clear: no satisfying explanation is available. That's the news! That's interesting, even to people who decided not to devote their lives to astronomy! People jump to the alien angle because it's interesting. The few left with that impression that aliens really are involved are likely not going to be dissuaded by more technical reporting

mikeash 10y ago
The trouble is that people jump to the alien angle because it's interesting, then get angry with the scientists when it turns out to be mundane. I don't see this so much as being frustrated with people who are interested, but rather being frustrated with reporters who take something relatively mundane and blow it into a big story, setting people up for disappointment. And actually, the linked post gives several satisfying explanations. They don't know which one is the right one, but that's not the same as "unexplained." If you see a flash of light in the night, it could be car headlights or lightning or a transformer explosion. It could be aliens, but the mundane explanations are enough, even if you don't have enough information to choose one in particular.
- dTal 10y ago
  I agree with your point in general, but I'm not sure "unexplained" means the same as "having no explanation". After all, you can "explain" any phenomenon by mass hallucination of everyone who's observed it, or simply chocking it up to an extremely unlikely macroscopic quantum fluctuation. To decide whether something's a satisfactory explanation, you have to look at the a priori probability, not just how well it fits the facts. We don't actually know the a priori probability of detecting life, so it's hard to compare it against the also unknown probabilities of various other previously undiscovered astronomical phenomena, like the proposed "swarm of comets" around Tabby's star. All that being said, in this case the fact that "SETI@home has seen millions of potential signals with similar characteristics" does imply there's nothing in particular here to get excited about. But you know, all those other signals could have been aliens too...
partiallypro 10y ago
I mean it is SETI. Aliens are literally in the name. So yeah, I don't quite understand it either. Let people's imagination's run wild, it generates interest and hopefully ignites some young minds to become active in the effort and learn.
drostie 10y ago
The problem is that you don't want to be the kid who cried wolf, you don't want to be endorsing crying wolf, and you in fact maybe even want to punish the newspapers who cried wolf and said you were responsible for the cry. SETI wants to have the ability to say later, "guys, we have a signal, and this time we think it's real." The best way to have that credibility is if your members are the most likely to say "hey, I know the media is really interested in this but we're really hard-nosed skeptical bastards who aren't going to fool you, this is probably nothing." Then when those people actually say "this is probably something!" you're like, "woah, even the hard-nosed skeptical bastards are throwing in with it." Depending on your perspective this is either undermined or enforced by the way climate change has been approached. Climate change has been an indisputable fact compelling so many hard-nosed skeptical climate scientists for so long, that now the deniers no longer believe that the scientists are hard-nosed or skeptical. So maybe this is misguided and "haters gonna hate" anyway. But I can understand why it's the default attitude in a tenuous field like fusion research or SETI.
- Roritharr 10y ago
  Maybe the Fusion and SETI people can learn something from the AI/Machine Learning people. Lots of funding is currently thrown at people who go around telling people they can almost taste the Singularity...
prance 10y ago
I want to believe!
riboflava 10y ago
"We don't do science for the general public. We do it for each other. Good day." -- Renato Dalbecco
- blts 10y ago
  Given that generic public finances science being done, a reasonable explanation is expected when it is being requested. Perhaps if scientific community put forward 10% of their time explaining importance and fun aspects of the research that they do - they could expect a raise in the level of funding.
  - Johnny555 10y ago
    The reasonable explanation will be offered when the research is published - no researcher has time to sit down and explain every anomalous data point to the public. It would take much more than 10% of a researcher's time to explain research concepts in a way that would let the public truly understand it. Otherwise they are just giving out meaningless soundbites that will be misinterpreted.
aaron695 10y ago
> Because the receivers used were making broad band measurements, there's really nothing about this "signal" that would distinguish it from a natural radio transient (stellar flare, active galactic nucleus, microlensing of a background source, etc.) There's also nothing that could distinguish it from a satellite passing through the telescope field of view. A satellite passing through the telescope field of view is interesting to you? OP is implying you've been had by bad science.

by gp7 10y ago

mikeash 10y ago

The trouble is that people jump to the alien angle because it's interesting, then get angry with the scientists when it turns out to be mundane. I don't see this so much as being frustrated with people who are interested, but rather being frustrated with reporters who take something relatively mundane and blow it into a big story, setting people up for disappointment. And actually, the linked post gives several satisfying explanations. They don't know which one is the right one, but that's not the same as "unexplained." If you see a flash of light in the night, it could be car headlights or lightning or a transformer explosion. It could be aliens, but the mundane explanations are enough, even if you don't have enough information to choose one in particular.

dTal 10y ago
I agree with your point in general, but I'm not sure "unexplained" means the same as "having no explanation". After all, you can "explain" any phenomenon by mass hallucination of everyone who's observed it, or simply chocking it up to an extremely unlikely macroscopic quantum fluctuation. To decide whether something's a satisfactory explanation, you have to look at the a priori probability, not just how well it fits the facts. We don't actually know the a priori probability of detecting life, so it's hard to compare it against the also unknown probabilities of various other previously undiscovered astronomical phenomena, like the proposed "swarm of comets" around Tabby's star. All that being said, in this case the fact that "SETI@home has seen millions of potential signals with similar characteristics" does imply there's nothing in particular here to get excited about. But you know, all those other signals could have been aliens too...

partiallypro 10y ago

I mean it is SETI. Aliens are literally in the name. So yeah, I don't quite understand it either. Let people's imagination's run wild, it generates interest and hopefully ignites some young minds to become active in the effort and learn.

drostie 10y ago

The problem is that you don't want to be the kid who cried wolf, you don't want to be endorsing crying wolf, and you in fact maybe even want to punish the newspapers who cried wolf and said you were responsible for the cry. SETI wants to have the ability to say later, "guys, we have a signal, and this time we think it's real." The best way to have that credibility is if your members are the most likely to say "hey, I know the media is really interested in this but we're really hard-nosed skeptical bastards who aren't going to fool you, this is probably nothing." Then when those people actually say "this is probably something!" you're like, "woah, even the hard-nosed skeptical bastards are throwing in with it." Depending on your perspective this is either undermined or enforced by the way climate change has been approached. Climate change has been an indisputable fact compelling so many hard-nosed skeptical climate scientists for so long, that now the deniers no longer believe that the scientists are hard-nosed or skeptical. So maybe this is misguided and "haters gonna hate" anyway. But I can understand why it's the default attitude in a tenuous field like fusion research or SETI.

Roritharr 10y ago
Maybe the Fusion and SETI people can learn something from the AI/Machine Learning people. Lots of funding is currently thrown at people who go around telling people they can almost taste the Singularity...

prance 10y ago

I want to believe!

riboflava 10y ago

"We don't do science for the general public. We do it for each other. Good day." -- Renato Dalbecco

blts 10y ago
Given that generic public finances science being done, a reasonable explanation is expected when it is being requested. Perhaps if scientific community put forward 10% of their time explaining importance and fun aspects of the research that they do - they could expect a raise in the level of funding.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  The reasonable explanation will be offered when the research is published - no researcher has time to sit down and explain every anomalous data point to the public. It would take much more than 10% of a researcher's time to explain research concepts in a way that would let the public truly understand it. Otherwise they are just giving out meaningless soundbites that will be misinterpreted.

aaron695 10y ago

> Because the receivers used were making broad band measurements, there's really nothing about this "signal" that would distinguish it from a natural radio transient (stellar flare, active galactic nucleus, microlensing of a background source, etc.) There's also nothing that could distinguish it from a satellite passing through the telescope field of view. A satellite passing through the telescope field of view is interesting to you? OP is implying you've been had by bad science.