The discovery of a new planetoid has set off a bitter feud between American and Spanish scientists while raising questions about the ethics of Internet research.
The dispute began in July when Michael Brown, a professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, discovered a new planetoid in the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt.
Days before announcing his discovery, however, a group of Spanish astronomers claimed the new planetoid.
American researchers said they learned that the Spanish scientists had discovered where Brown was aiming a Chilean telescope by using an Internet search engine.
“This is a wake-up call for scientists,” Brown said.
Scientist Jose Luis Ortiz says he and his researchers did nothing wrong and the data found using the Google search engine should be considered public and thus free to use.
“If somebody uses Google to find publicly available information on the Internet and Google directs to a public Web page, that is perfectly legitimate,” Ortiz wrote in an e-mail to the Los Angeles Times that the newspaper cited Sunday.
Is the question whether Ortiz and his researchers “did anything wrong,” or is an even better question whether they did anything noteworthy? What exactly is their claim to fame here?
[A story on this from Sunday can be found at the Los Angeles Times website. I won’t link directly to it because of their sign-in block, but you will want to read it if you are interested in this story.]
Hopefully, peer review bodies have established procedures. On one hand, you face the reality of more than one person heading in the direction where other folks have struck gold. Not exactly illegal or unethical. On the other, you have examples, say, like Toshiba patenting all means of controlling digital devices by any EMF produced by a human being.
Phew!
The only thing Ortiz and his team can claim is that they “discovered” that another astronomer had discoved a new planetoid. Hardly noteworthy.
Is this the only way Spain can contribute to science? Their own government should remove their claim. Hopefully the Nobel committee takes ethics into consideration.
Then again, didn’t Spain claim to discover the new world with Columbus? Or was it Lief Ericson 400 years before, or Amerigo Vespucci? Indeed Columbus and Vespucci were really Italian. So, it seems like this is a habit with Spain. Next they will be slaughering the inhabitants on the new planet and stealing their gold.