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(meteorobs) Comment from Gareth Williams

Before we finally qus=ash this off topic thread :->

Wayne



: There was a *press release* issued by CBAT. Not just a circular. Had it
: been just a circular, this situation would have been a lot different.
: They should have collected the additional data before issuing the press
: release.

  The "press information sheet" was not *issued* by CBAT.  The PIS was
put on the website so that any journalist who read the IAUC could find
answers to the standard questions that journalists ask in a form that
nonscientifically-trained journalists can understand.  We did not
send the PIS to any media outlets.  You may think this is a question of
semantics, but it is not.  We specifically note at the foot of
each PIS that the document should not be redistributed.  If third-parties
chose to ignore this and redistributed the PIS, that cannot be our
responsibility.

: Certianly the public press is not the way to contact the astronomical
: community.

  And it never is.  The IAUCs (and MPECs and MPCs) are the way to contact
the astronomical community.  But there are a number of newspaper and TV
journalists who receive the IAUCs.  Everything that was written on IAUC
6837 was correct, given the information available at the time.  Since we
had just finished preparing the 1998 March batch of Minor Planet
Circulars, the 88-day arc orbit on which the original predictions had
been made would have been available to the community.  Anyone who
integrated the orbit forward looking for forthcoming close approaches to
the earth would have found the 2028 encounter.  Wouldn't they have thought
it strange, having found the extremely close encounter (and there are quite
a number of groups, including some amateurs, who could have found this
event), that we had not put out a call for further observations?  And
that the call be made in a restrained manner as on IAUC 6837?

  I hasten to add that in *every* interview we gave (particularly those
given prior to the identification of the 1990 prediscovery observations
by Ken Lawrence of Eleanor Helin's group) we were very careful to stress
both the uncertainty and the need for further observations before we could
say anything definitive about the 2028 encounter.  Guess which bits
of the interviews ended up on the cutting-room floor?  TV news, in
particular, is looking for sensationalism.

  We did not go to the media with this story.  The media came to us
If you feel it necessary to assign blame for the coverage of this event,
I suggest looking towards (certain parts of) the media and the culture
to which they cater.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gareth V. Williams, MS 18, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Associate Director, IAU Minor Planet Center
E-mail address suppressed         http://cfa-www.harvarddot edu/iau/mpc.html
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