Monthly Archives: April 2013

Ethics and Evil

One of my hats at Penn State is as a Rock Ethics Fellow, which means I’ve had a short training course in ethics (with a focus on applications to an academic context) and serve as a visible resource for people with ethical quandries. This was instituted before the late unpleasantness, but has gotten higher visibility since then.

I try to work ethical academic and research behavior into my classes.

In my First Year Seminar class the focus is on academic dishonesty and the virtues of time management. We discuss how cheating is antithetical to the students’ avowed reason for being in college (it’s about learning not the grades) and also simply unfair. We discuss hypotheticals like “If the dean offered to give you your BA right now, no questions asked, would you take it” (this is their first semester on campus). I argue that time management is a virtue because it prevents you from encountering ethical dilemmas in the first place. If you are never late or behind on things and have a sense for how much free time you have, then you don’t encounter as many dilemmas with no good solution (do I cram for this test or help a friend in need tonight?)

In my introductory astronomy class for nonmajors the focus is on how being skeptical of yourself and your motives, and recognizing our minds’ inherent illogical habits. Knowing that we all suffer from confirmation bias and motivated reasoning helps us recognize it in others and ourselves, and helps us prevent ourselves from wrongly justifying unethical behavior. I argue that a skeptical, scientific approach to things will help us better recognize when what we want is actually unethical and make better choices.

Anyway, in a recent review of a novel adaptation of Macbeth, (a review disguised as a meditation on the meaning of evil in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings), Ron Rosenblum writes:

Perhaps the best response to laying off the blame for evil to ideology or theology comes from Murray Kempton… [who] tossed off one of the single wisest things I’ve ever heard said about ideology and evil: “It took me a while to discover this,” he said, “but the biggest mistake you can make is to follow your ideas [i.e. act on them according] to their logical conclusions. You can make a lot of other [mistakes], and every now and then you can be right. But when you follow your ideas to their logical conclusions you are always wrong.” (Bold edit mine).

This also strikes me as wise, and here is why.

A major problem in ethics is to what degree one must respect opinions we disagree with, when they lead others to commit acts we consider unethical. I feel that being a pluralist society means that we sacrifice our impulse to require others to live by our moral standards, and in exchange we acquire the right to live by our own unmolested (though not, of course, unchallenged). This must have its limits, of course, but in general those limits roughly correspond to the boundary between personal and social behavior: your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose (or your child’s… that’s one place things start getting complicated).

A major reason that Kempton’s words are wise (and scientific thinking supports ethical thinking) is that it comes from an understanding that all knowledge is (and should be) provisional. Having the courage of one’s convictions is only absolutely justified if one’s convictions are fully informed. As scientists we know that that is rarely the case, and, even worse, we are easily mistaken about the amount of certainty our beliefs warrant.

In the influential essay The Opening of the American Mind Arthur Schlesinger Jr. discusses the American impulse for pluralism and how it deals with its variety of absolute moralities in an anecdote that has haunted and guided me since I read it in high school:

‘Deep-seated preferences,” as Justice Holmes put it, ”cannot be argued about . . . and therefore, when differences are sufficiently far-reaching, we try to kill the other man rather than let him have his way. But that is perfectly consistent with admitting that, so far as it appears, his grounds are just as good as ours.”

Once Justice Holmes and Judge Learned Hand discussed these questions on a long train ride. Learned Hand gave as his view that ”opinions are at best provisional hypotheses, incompletely tested. The more they are tested . . . the more assurance we may assume, but they are never absolutes. So we must be tolerant of opposite opinions.” Holmes wondered whether Hand might not be carrying his tolerance to dangerous lengths. ”You say,” Hand wrote Holmes later, ”that I strike at the sacred right to kill the other fellow when he disagrees. The horrible possibility silenced me when you said it. Now, I say, ‘Not at all, kill him for the love of Christ and in the name of God, but always remember that he may be the saint and you the devil.’ ”

Act boldly, but skeptically. Words to live by.

[Update: Dr. J points out an ambiguity in the phrase “follow your ideas to their logical conclusions”. In the sense of the article I’m quoting, it means “act according to those ideas’ logical conclusions” not “think through the logical consequences of your beliefs”. The latter is crucial to critical thinking, the former lead can lead to great evil. For instance, “abortion is murder of innocents” and “murderers should receive the death penalty” are reasonable beliefs many people hold. Executing every woman who has willingly obtained an abortion would be evil.]

Linkedy Links

In the spirit of Steinn Sigur�sson’s periodic “Linkedy Links” posts on his blog, I present my own roundup (most courtesy of him, actually):

There is an article in New Scientist (free login required, or go here) about the new wave of archaeology SETI, including work by AstroWright buddies Lucianne Walkowicz and Andrew Howard.

Centauri Dreams is on the Dyson sphere beat with two entries, including coverage of the New Scientist article:
Archaeology on an Interstellar Scale
Finding ET in the Data

Speaking of, here is an interesting argument by Armstrong and Sandberg that Type III Kardashev civilizations are not ambitious enough: if you can travel the stars then you should inevitably span multiple galaxies. I think this might be right.

Popular Science online had an initial reaction to the IAU press release here. They fixed it, and interviewed me for the longer article here.

Finally, more pics and text about the first telescope of the Minerva array here on John Johnson’s blog.

What the IAU should have written

Here is a marked-up version of the press release whose text I would have not objected to (except that I think the entire endeavor was totally unnecessary and motivated by a misguided attempt to bash Uwingu, but that is not my fight).

In the light of recent events, where the possibility of ~~buying the rights to name~~ nominating or voting on popular names for exoplanets has been advertised, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) wishes to inform the public that ~~such schemes have no bearing on the official naming process~~astronomers do not use such names and the international astronomical community currently has no plans to do so. The IAU wholeheartedly welcomes the public’s interest to be involved in recent discoveries, but would like to strongly stress the importance of having a unified naming procedurefor official names and designations.

More than 800 planets outside the Solar System have been found to date, with thousands more waiting to be confirmed. Detection methods in this field are steadily and quickly increasing — meaning that many more exoplanets will undoubtedly be discovered in the months and years to come.

Recently, an organisation has invited the public to purchase both nomination proposals for exoplanets, and rights to vote for the suggested popular names. In return, the purchaser receives a certificate commemorating the validity and credibility of the nomination with the organization. ~~Such certificates are misleading, as these campaigns have no bearing on the official naming process — they will not lead to~~The IAU stresses that these certificates are not from the IAU and that there is currently no process that would accept the certificate as indicating an officially-recognised exoplanet name, ~~despite~~ regardless ofthe price paid or the number of votes accrued.

Upon discovery, exoplanets and other astronomical objects usually receive unambiguous ~~and official~~catalogue designations, according to a convention adopted by astronomers and recognised by the IAU. While exoplanet names such as 16 Cygni Bb or HD 41004 Ab may seem boring when considering the names of planets in our own Solar System, the vast number of objects in our Universe — galaxies, stars, and planets to name just a few — means that a clear and systematic system for naming these objects is vital. Any naming system is a scientific issue that must also work across different languages and cultures in order to support collaborative worldwide research and avoid confusion.

To make this possible, the IAU has the authority to acts as a single arbiter of the naming process, and is advised and supported by astronomers within different fields. As an international scientific organisation, it dissociates itself entirely from the commercial practice of selling “official” names of planets, stars or or even “real estate” on other planets or moons. ~~These practices will not be recognised by the IAU and their alternative naming schemes cannot be adopted.~~

However, the IAU greatly appreciates and wishes to acknowledge the increasing interest from the general public in being more closely involved in the discovery and understanding of our Universe. As a result in 2013 the IAU Commission 53 Extrasolar Planets and other IAU members will be consulted on the topic of having popular names for exoplanets, and the results will be made public on the IAU website. Meanwhile, astronomers ~~and the public are encouraged to~~ will keep using the existing accepted nomenclature [1] — details of which can be found on the Astronomy for the Public section of the IAU web page, under Naming Astronomical Objects.

Notes

[1] A cCatalogues of the exoplanets discovered, with their ~~officially assigned~~ generally acceptedcatalogue designations, can be consulted in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia (http://exoplanet.eu/)., the Exoplanet Orbit Database (http://exoplanets.org) and the Exoplanet Archive (http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/)

Some Points Of Clarification

A few points of clarification about my earlier post, in response to the large volume of responses I received:

“The IAU does not name planets” (by which, of course, I meant “exoplanets”):

1) Obviously, the IAU has the power to decide on official names an designations for celestial objects. My point is that it has never formally exercised its power for exoplanets, despite claiming in the press release that “Upon discovery, exoplanets and other astronomical objects receive unambiguous and official catalogue designations.” The word “official” there is this highly misleading, because it suggests that the IAU has some role in giving planets designations.

2) The IAU has had a quasi-official list of planets and names as recently as 2006, when the Working Group on Exoplanets was dissolved. I pointed this out in my original post. This list was never adopted by the General Assembly, to my knowledge.

3) The IAU Working Group on Exoplanets (now Commission 53) unofficially blessed the practice of adding a lowercase letter starting with ‘b’ after a valid star name, increasing in order of planet discovery. It did not invent this scheme, nor did it ever enforce it when competing schemes or ambiguous cases appeared in the literature; the scheme arose organically amongst the early planet hunters and is applied inconsistently (for instance, HD 10180 b, GJ 581 g, the mu Arae system).

4) I would be fine with the IAU resolving naming disputes of planets, like those in the mu Arae system, for instance. This would require, at a minimum, a vote from Commission 53, as I understand things. I’m not calling on them to do this, though; bureaucracies are slow, and it’s probably unnecessary because these cases are not so common that I can’t keep track of them. So far.

5) I don’t think there is a global conspiracy going on here; I think that in its haste to condemn Uwingu the IAU misstated its role in naming planets. I suspect that most of this was just sloppiness, and instead of using the term “official” the IAU should have simply referred to the convention that astronomers usually follow. I think they unnecessarily implied that the IAU has been involved in planet nomenclature to give themselves greater rhetorical authority on the subject in order to bash Uwingu.

“The IAU press release cannot represent IAU policy”:

6) My original use of the phrase “rogue press agent” improperly implied that I believed the press agent acted without the authority of the IAU General Secretary or the Commission President. I did not mean to imply that or to insult Mr. Christensen, and I apologize. “Rogue” referred to the fact the assertions in the press release did not reflect any vote by the relevant committee or by the General Assembly. I have edited the post.

7) My issue was not with the IAU pointing to exoplanet.eu as an example of how astronomers give names to exoplanets, which is fine, of course. Indeed, it was Jean Schneider’s hard work on exoplanet.eu that led the Working Group to abandon its efforts at keeping its own list. My issue is with the IAU stating that the names and planets on that list have “officially assigned catalog designations”, which is false. There is nothing “official” about those names. Indeed that list differs from mine because of differing standards for calling something a planet and differing applications of the unofficial convention for nomenclature.

Commission 53 is charged with resolving these issues, but has not done so yet, so the endorsement of that list without a vote is premature and inappropriate.

Uwingu:

8) I have no role in Uwingu and have not contributed to their organization. I applaud their overall goals, I respect its board and team, and I am sure they are not running a “scam.” I take no position on the wisdom of their planet naming contest because I don’t have strong opinion about it.

9) I pointed out in my post that Uwingu should make it clearer to casual readers of their website that their names would not necessarily be IAU sanctioned. I think the Uwingu team and board thinks this is already clear, and I think they did not intend to suggest otherwise.

10) Many people wanted to know if I would use the names that win votes at Uwingu. My answer: not unless they appeared as useful designations in the peer-reviewed literature, and even then I would prefer IAU sanction. I note Uwingu is clear that it is proposing “popular” names for exoplanets, which astronomers often use in press releases but very rarely in peer-reviewed papers.

No, the IAU does NOT officially name planets

The IAU has issued a statement regarding the naming of planets by a group called Uwingu that is misleading or inaccurate in several ways. Reading it, one could be forgiven for coming away believing that the IAU has given official names to planets, that these names can be found at exoplanet.eu, and that the commission responsible for this process has refused to consider Uwingu’s names. All three implications are absolutely false.

The IAU states “In the light of recent events, where the possibility of buying the rights to name exoplanets has been advertised, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) wishes to inform the public that such schemes have no bearing on the official naming process…. they will not lead to an officially-recognised exoplanet name, despite the price paid or the number of votes accrued.<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); >"

This is misleading for several reasons:

1) Contrary to the press release’s implication, the IAU does not name planets.

In the 20 years since the discovery of exoplanets, the IAU has never officially named any of them. There is not even an official scheme for binary stars, or an official definition of an exoplanet! (There are recommendations and conventions for both, but these do not carry the official weight of an IAU definition, which is what the press release implies. For instance, the oft-used 13 Jupiter mass threshold for planet-hood was endorsed by an IAU Working Group as a useful working definition, but it is not “official”. The planet definition that killed Pluto explicitly applies only to Solar System objects.)

2) Contrary to the press releases’s assertion, there is no “official naming process.”

As another part of the IAU statement makes clear, the IAU may establish one in the future through its Commission 53.

3) Contrary to the press release’s assertion, Commission 53 has not foreclosed the possibility of using Uwingu’s names.

Since there is no official process, there has been no decision about what names to use. Thus, there is no reason that the Uwingu database could not be used in a future process established by the IAU. That decision is up to the members of Commission 53, not an IAU press agent [Update: or any other signatory of the press release]. In fact, I’ll bet the members of Uwingu, given their prominent status in the astronomical community, will ask the members of Commission 53 to use their database as a source of potential names.

4) Contrary to the press release’s implication, the press release does not and cannot describe official IAU policy.

IAU policy is determined by democratic vote of its commissions and General Assembly. Neither has endorsed any nomenclature for planets, much less the assertions of the press release. The IAU statement is thus the product of a rogue press ~~agent~~ release^*. I know this because I have contacted a member of Commission 53 and learned that they were not consulted for or even informed of this press release before it went out, and that the commission has not established a naming process since it met in Beijing in 2012.

5) Contrary to the press release’s implication, Uwingu is not actually promising to give official names to or to sell naming rights to specific planets

The press release refers to a project by Uwingu to nominate names for astronomers to use to name exoplanets. Uwingu is a ~~non-profit~~ organization, founded by scientists, dedicated to funding science, and is trying to raise money and awareness of exoplanets.

The Uwingu project in question does not promise “rights to name exoplanets”. It is compiling a database of names that astronomers, including those in charge of nomenclature at the IAU, might use to name exoplanets. This is quite distinct from ~~scams~~ “novelties” like the International Star Registry who claim to allow you to “officially” name a particular star. (Today, that registry is careful to point out astronomers will not use your name; in the past they have done everything they could to imply the names would be official.)

There is an Uwingu contest to name one particular planet — alpha Centauri B b. They post a letter by that planet’s discoverer, Xavier Dumusque, endorsing this contest. This is not a meaningless gesture — the discoverer of asteroids, for instance, can nominate an official name according to the official IAU naming process.

That said, I think that Uwingu should make it much more clear that the IAU could establish such an official naming scheme in the future, and that if it does so it is under no obligation to use Uwingu’s names. But the IAU’s press release goes far beyond this caveat.

Finally, and this is where things get personal: the press releases states:

“A catalogue of the exoplanets discovered, with their officially assigned catalogue designations, can be consulted in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia (http://exoplanet.eu/).“

Let’s be clear: exoplanet.eu is NOT an “official” list of exoplanet names, or of exoplanents. Comparison with other lists, such as mine at exoplanets.org or the Exoplanet Archive reveals it contains many planets that are not on those lists. This is because those planets have never been subject to peer review, or that their very existence is dubious. The IAU has never officially defined any list, any planet names on any list, or the process by which those planets would appear on those lists. In fact, those times the IAU has given quasi-official status to a list many years ago (for instance, here), they did NOT use the list at exoplanet.eu.

This is not to disparage exoplanet.eu: it is an invaluable resource that my group uses on a daily basis, and the astronomical community is in debt to Jean Schneider and his team for their hard work on that site. But exoplanet.eu is not an official arm of the IAU, and it does not contain a perfect list of exoplanets.

I hope the IAU issues a clarification on all of these points.

OK, glad I got that off my chest. :)

^*[Update 2: My original use of the phrase “rogue press agent” improperly implied that I believed the press agent acted without the authority of the IAU General Secretary or the Commission President. I did not mean to imply that or to insult Mr. Christensen, and I apologize. “Rogue” referred to the fact the assertions in the press release did not reflect any vote by the relevant committee or by the General Assembly.]

[Update: Uwingu is apparently not actually a nonprofit; I fact-checked that item before adding it (it was not in the 1st version of that post) but now cannot find the source. The website does say that Uwingu is a for-profit. Still, my point was not so much to praise Uwingu, which I have no involvement in and I have not contributed to, but to point out the IAU’s lack of due process. As for caveat emptor, I know Geoff Marcy, and Alan Stern is a reputable scientist with a true passion for this stuff. Profits go towards science and education, and the Twitter feed asserts that Uwingu team members do not receive salaries. Of course, this proves nothing, but given that I know the people involved I’m sure it’s not a scam.]

@physicschris @uwingu No one at Uwingu has ever been paid, we have all worked for free from the start.

— Uwingu (@UwinguSky) April 14, 2013

First Light!

I’ve teamed up with John Johnson and Nate McCrady to build an array of small (0.7 m) telescopes to find rocky planets orbiting the brightest, nearest, Sun-like stars. We call it Project Minerva (originally this was a sort of portmanteau/initialism of “miniature” and “RV array” and other various ideas from an earlier version of the project; now it’s just a distinctive name).

Penn State is providing the first of the telescopes, a PlaneWave CDK-700. I had originally envisioned that Minerva would join Swift, the Hobby-Eberly telescope, and even the rooftop and new arboretum telescopes on campus as part of “Nittary Observatory” (one observatory, geographically distributed echoing our (now-indicted) former president’s description of Penn State).

Anyway, this first telescope was to be called the PSU Automated Telescope for Exoplanet Reconnaissance at Nittany Observatory (PATERNO).

Yeah, I know. Things change.

So for now we call the telescope “T1”.

Anyway, I’ll do a blog post on the rationale and methodology later, but for now I’m thrilled to report that T1 is really finally actually ours!

The delivery date to our Pasadena testbed was supposed to be April 1, which excited me because I just happened to be giving a talk at Caltech that day (why we bought that delivery date I’ll never know:). It was pushed back because of a faulty lens, so I missed delivery, but now everything is ship-shape and ready for use.

The Apogee camera doesn’t have any filter wheels yet, but we can still take white-light images. Here is the first, of M51:
The Caltech team apparently used tricks from near-infrared astronomers to subtract the bright sky background (nodding and subtracting) to produce this “first-light” image. Exposure time is 60s and no flat fielding was performed. Not bad for 2″.7 seeing from the middle of Pasadena! Here are our first-night observers in the “aqawan” enclosure on E. California Boulevard across from Cahill:

Actually, I’m told first light was really the crescent moon (I guess they couldn’t wait to get on sky)!