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A comment on Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now. Parent comment

Re:Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now by quux on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @11:25AM (#4809669)
I think in that case the scientists involved did everything they could think of to explain their data before going public. So I wouldn't call it an early disclosure of an unconfirmed result, more like "Hey everyone, this is really weird, and we we can't explain it"

Historically, this is where one of 2 things would happen, either it would have some mundane explanation that the original investigator missed, or it's one of those anomalies that leads to new scientific discoveries.

So I think they handled it correctly, and got the right kind o f attention.

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Re:Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now by jpdoctor on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @11:29AM (#4809716)
> So I think they handled it correctly, and got the right kind o f attention.

I also think they handled it correctly, but I believe the head of that org was relieved of command.

Not cool. He was very explicit about the how's and why's of what they were publishing, but many media outlets took it far away from context.

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Re:Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now by politician on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @11:36AM (#4809770)
Wait, didn't the principal scientist resign as a result of the media hype storm?

Yes... http://news.discovery.com/space/opera-leaders-resign-after-n...

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Re:Big News From Mars? Rover Scientists Mum For Now by quux on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @11:40AM (#4809792)
Yes he was sacked, but here's the important quote from that article:

Even Ereditato never claimed that their work had overturned Einstein. "I would never say that," he told Science last September. "We are forced to say something. We could not sweep it under the carpet, because that would be dishonest."

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