4 ms·

I found this article frustrating to read because of the lack of details, explanation, or attempts to educate the reader. Overall, it is just the reporting of sp

I found this article frustrating to read because of the lack of details, explanation, or attempts to educate the reader. Overall, it is just the reporting of speculation and nothing more. That said, I wonder if this is the type of news source we need. Anyone who wants further details can and should research the topic before drawing conclusions like the pre-baked ones we usually receive from our news sources.

Uehreka 6y ago
Nah, I feel like “sources or GTFO”. If an article has a source then you can at least evaluate the claims yourself. But if the article is vague and doesn’t cite, then you have to look through science news or journals for things that “look like” they could’ve prompted the article, but you can’t be sure if you’ve found the actual source (which may be more or less substantive than the thing you do find).
- thesuitonym 6y ago
  >In his[Alberto Caballero] paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server That looks like a citation to me. This isn't a defense of the article, which is bad for a variety of reasons. I'm just saying let's stick to what's true, rather than pretending they didn't cite a source just because they didn't have a hyperlink.
  - benpanter 6y ago
    The "paper" is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 but its analysis is not really something that you'd get published in an astronomy journal [speaking as a former professional astronomer]
    - partisan 6y ago
      Sorry to pry, but what does one do after a professional astronomy career?
      - eecc 6y ago
        You write Scala? (https://tpolecat.github.io https://tpolecat.github.io)
      - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
        Trick Soviet hackers into thinking your government lab is doing research on space based weapons.
        codezero 6y ago
        From the labs I've worked in, I think the Russians would already know you weren't given the security of a lot of researchers' systems, maybe not national labs/NASA, but I even did some work at Goddard Space Flight Center and it was an ancient lab that definitely had live internet Ethernet wires here and there that systems were plugged into doing... stuff.
      - codezero 6y ago
        I did a lot of data processing, and about 1/4 of the year was grant proposals.
      - unixhero 6y ago
        All (two) of the astronomers I know became fat, lazy, well paid engineers with a wife, house and garden, picket fence, doing programming and engineering at a multinational company. Sigh, I had such high hopes.
      - benpanter 6y ago
        In my case, I founded a company based on the algorithmic approaches I developed as an academic - www.blackfordanalysis.com Folks who did their PhDs about the same time as me, and progressed through a couple of postdoc positions, are variously: science teachers, data scientists, product managers, quants, environmental analysts, software engineers, hardware engineers and industrial scientists. In the UK, fewer than one in ten astronomers who take a first astronomy job post-PhD (usually called a postdoc) progress to a permanent faculty position. Those that do make the journey typically take about a decade and three to four fixed-term positions to get there.
    - codezero 6y ago
      Very much agree, this is a fishing expedition where you can come to pretty much any conclusion. 1. the regions of sky that the signal might have come from are huge, and contain tons of stars. 2. he's basically just sifting through all the stars in a huge area of space and looking for ones with Sol like parameters. That's not science, but that said, it doesn't mean we shouldn't have a look and listen at the star if it really is a great candidate. When Kepler started returning data, so much of it was unexpected that at the very least now we have a star name that if future scientists are looking to compare their data set with other findings, they may see "oh this 2mass star was hypothesized to be the wow signal by a crank, but we just found X there!" It's tricky of course, because it's hard for a normal person (I am assuming) to tell the difference between some dude who uploads a neat thing to arXiv and someone who stakes their career and livelihood on the science they produce.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    It's missing a link. The article directly references a paper, but gives no way to unambiguously locate it. That's not a source, it's an open invitation to research.

Uehreka 6y ago

Nah, I feel like “sources or GTFO”. If an article has a source then you can at least evaluate the claims yourself. But if the article is vague and doesn’t cite, then you have to look through science news or journals for things that “look like” they could’ve prompted the article, but you can’t be sure if you’ve found the actual source (which may be more or less substantive than the thing you do find).

thesuitonym 6y ago
>In his[Alberto Caballero] paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server That looks like a citation to me. This isn't a defense of the article, which is bad for a variety of reasons. I'm just saying let's stick to what's true, rather than pretending they didn't cite a source just because they didn't have a hyperlink.
- benpanter 6y ago
  The "paper" is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.06090 but its analysis is not really something that you'd get published in an astronomy journal [speaking as a former professional astronomer]
  - partisan 6y ago
    Sorry to pry, but what does one do after a professional astronomy career?
    - eecc 6y ago
      You write Scala? (https://tpolecat.github.io https://tpolecat.github.io)
    - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
      Trick Soviet hackers into thinking your government lab is doing research on space based weapons.
      - codezero 6y ago
        From the labs I've worked in, I think the Russians would already know you weren't given the security of a lot of researchers' systems, maybe not national labs/NASA, but I even did some work at Goddard Space Flight Center and it was an ancient lab that definitely had live internet Ethernet wires here and there that systems were plugged into doing... stuff.
    - codezero 6y ago
      I did a lot of data processing, and about 1/4 of the year was grant proposals.
    - unixhero 6y ago
      All (two) of the astronomers I know became fat, lazy, well paid engineers with a wife, house and garden, picket fence, doing programming and engineering at a multinational company. Sigh, I had such high hopes.
    - benpanter 6y ago
      In my case, I founded a company based on the algorithmic approaches I developed as an academic - www.blackfordanalysis.com Folks who did their PhDs about the same time as me, and progressed through a couple of postdoc positions, are variously: science teachers, data scientists, product managers, quants, environmental analysts, software engineers, hardware engineers and industrial scientists. In the UK, fewer than one in ten astronomers who take a first astronomy job post-PhD (usually called a postdoc) progress to a permanent faculty position. Those that do make the journey typically take about a decade and three to four fixed-term positions to get there.
  - codezero 6y ago
    Very much agree, this is a fishing expedition where you can come to pretty much any conclusion. 1. the regions of sky that the signal might have come from are huge, and contain tons of stars. 2. he's basically just sifting through all the stars in a huge area of space and looking for ones with Sol like parameters. That's not science, but that said, it doesn't mean we shouldn't have a look and listen at the star if it really is a great candidate. When Kepler started returning data, so much of it was unexpected that at the very least now we have a star name that if future scientists are looking to compare their data set with other findings, they may see "oh this 2mass star was hypothesized to be the wow signal by a crank, but we just found X there!" It's tricky of course, because it's hard for a normal person (I am assuming) to tell the difference between some dude who uploads a neat thing to arXiv and someone who stakes their career and livelihood on the science they produce.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  It's missing a link. The article directly references a paper, but gives no way to unambiguously locate it. That's not a source, it's an open invitation to research.