Dammit do I really have to provide comments to a journalist on another awful Avi Loeb paper?

[joshsusser@autistics.life]

@sundogplanets the man who single-handedly turned "Harvard astronomer" into a term of opprobrium

[oldclumsy_nowmad@mastodon.social]

@sundogplanets

You'd be hysterical, too, if you only knew...

31/ATLAS is not an innocent scientific probe from the Great Beyond. No. It's even more sinister than Panspermia. More terrifying than a Berserker probe. It's Berserkerest - a hunter-killer machine sent eons ago by aliens (long dead now) to terminate a physicist with a "brain the size of a planet".

Something or someone is breaking apart now. Watch out for those individually targeted Berserkerites.

https://newstangail24.com/the-new-3i-atlas-images-show-something/

[thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io]

@sundogplanets I’d prepare a standard answer like, “That man is a perpetual fraud. Here are ten interesting papers to report on from actual scientists: …”

[brickflyer@social.anoxinon.de]

@sundogplanets
if ky26: tell them they just have to wait until 2031 hayabusa2 will clear things. meanwhile they can just figure out by them selfes how reliable that guy is...

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

@brickflyer Yes it is, and that's the best possible response, thanks

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

@michael_w_busch KY26. I'm hoping for a Jonathan McDowell arXiv paper soon

[oisin@mastodon.ie]

@sundogplanets Is that man still at it with his ridiculous nonsense ugh why does the press give him any time at all

[brickflyer@social.anoxinon.de]

@sundogplanets

we say: da nich für.
means: you are welcome

maybe that link is for the journalist helpfull
https://www.geo.de/wissen/weltall/aliens-spionieren-uns-aus--die-ideen-dieses-harvard-forschers-nerven-nur-noch-35999432.html

[glitzersachen@hachyderm.io]

@TrueNorthSpice @sundogplanets @annaghughes

Yes. But he was too lazy to write a novel on this, so opted to write short story in a format called "scientific paper".

[truenorthspice@mastodon.world]

@glitzersachen @sundogplanets @annaghughes

"Zinger"

Good one.

[glitzersachen@hachyderm.io]

@astrojoachim @sundogplanets

The claims are what keeps media attention going. Because "might have been aliens, woohoo" is always newsworthy with a media landscape where the scientific education of journalists is sadly and utterly lacking. It got a high entertainment value. Whereas "this was a piece of rock (or ice)" is not very entertaining and will not generate follow-up stories.

Climate science was caught in a similar trap for more than a decade. All scientists were like 99% sure there would be a problem. Media coverage: "There are voices who says it's just the sun spots" and kept both-siding the issue with 50:50 coverage (if even 50 for climate science).

[apostateenglishman@mastodon.world]

@sundogplanets Even informed laypeople are tired of this guy. If his cat farted too audibly he'd probably write a whole paper about how invisible extra-terrestrial lifeforms are walking among us and communicating via feline anal emissions.

[klara@drupal.community]

@sundogplanets I didn't know him, and risked looking him up. Interesting. Black holes and exoplanets, getting funding for real projects by scaring people with extraterrestrials, and last but not least "tends to publish before peer review" according to Wikipedia