Category: Astronomy

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Foibles of research

Manipulation?

Coercion? Unwanted guests?

Foibles of research.

 

Academia prides itself on being fair, rational-minded and logical. Yet the practice behind these noble aims is sometimes far from that. A study by Fong & Wilhite (2017) reveals the various manipulations that can take place: from scholars gaining guest authorships on research papers despite contributing nothing to unnecessary reference list padding in an effort to boost citation rate. These instances of misconduct are likely a response to the pressures of an academic career – the demand for high numbers of publications and citation rates.

The survey of approximately 12,000 scholars across 18 disciplines revealed that over 35% of scholars have added an author to a manuscript despite little contribution (with female researchers more likely to add honorary authors than male researchers). 20% of scholars felt someone had been added to one of their grant proposal for no reason. 14% of academics reported being coerced into adding citations to their papers by journals, whilst 40% said they’d padded their reference list to pre-empt any coercion. Whilst changes to aspects of the academic system might help alleviate these issues, it’s likely to be a slow process.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0187394

 

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Found: Beagle lander

Found: Beagle lander.

Solar panel malfunction

prevents contact home.

 

In 2003 the Beagle 2 Mars lander arrived at Mars and was expected to make its first communication from the surface on Christmas day. The lander remained silent. None of the 24 attempts to make contact with the lander were successful, and without a sighting of the lander it was difficult to know what had gone wrong.

Now, Bridges et al (2017) have identified the lander using a recalculation of the predicted landing area and Mars Orbiter imagery of the target area. The lander was found within 20 kilometres of the original landing target and the images suggest that not all of the solar panels deployed successfully. Without the panels properly deploying communication would have been impossible. These findings suggest that everything appeared to be going well with entry, descent and landing sequence until a final fault during solar panel deployment.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170785

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Petite galaxy

Petite galaxy,

so young and oxygen-poor.

What can you tell us?

 

As the first galaxies formed they were chemically simple, composed of elements (hydrogen and helium) made during the first 3 minutes of the universe’s existence following the big bang. Oxygen and other complex elements formed later leading to the creation of oxygen-rich galaxies throughout the universe (like the Milky Way). In order to understand primordial galaxies astronomers need to observe oxygen-poor galaxies but finding such galaxies close enough for observation is extremely difficult.

Now a study by Izotov et al (2017) has found the most metal-poor dwarf star-forming galaxy known to date (J0811+4730), which has 9% less oxygen than any galaxy discovered so far. Observations of the young galaxy J0811+4730 could provide information about those galaxies formed during the early period of the universe as well as insights into how the early universe became re-ionized.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx2478