The student who discovered water on Mars says it was a 'lucky accident'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34390462/the-student-who-discovered-water-on-mars-says-it-was-a-lucky-accident

by scriptstar • 11 years ago

59 31 11 years ago

bbc.co.uk

bostonpete• 11 years ago

It's not clear what the accident was. (?)

It's also not clear why they included a picture of him playing guitar with a caption about his band...

scriptstar• 11 years ago

I agree.

dspillett• 11 years ago

It's also not clear why they included a picture of him playing guitar with a caption about his band...

There is a bit of a push at the moment, and has been for a while, to show that scientists and other technical types are normal people too, not just the stereotype anal retentive hyper-dedicated socially disconnected Asperger afflicted geniuses. You'll often see a little bit of information about the people in question that is ultimately completely irrelevant to the science/tech being discussed.

If it does help break down the stereotype a bit then it is a good thing: many kids are put off science in part because of such things.

doorty• 11 years ago

Yea, seems to be going in the opposite direction. Pop culture like tv shows Big Bang Theory and Silicon Valley are showing that it's actually cool to be geeky or into tech and startups.

return0• 11 years ago

You are right, someone reading articles about scientists, or about startups might come up with "they're all a bunch of hipsters nowadays". IMHO that's pretty bad, because it renders the creative but eccentric or reclusive scientist as someone who doesnt even fit in the scientific circles anymore. Here's how Peter Thiel puts it:

"the political people who are nimble in the art of writing government grants have gradually displaced the eccentric and idiosyncratic people who typically make the best scientists. The eccentric university professor is a species that is going extinct fast"

cLeEOGPw2• 11 years ago

You have to do it when you want to reach "general public" which is far-from-science type of individuals who refer to themselves as "not interested in politics, space and that kind of stuff. I'm interested in people and events that directly affect me today". These personal life descriptions helps them started. Shows quality of journalism actually.

pvaldes• 11 years ago

The "I'm scientist but I'm cool also because I play guitar" is a really unfortunate message. Specially when you think in all young scientists that need to have a second job (unrelated) to keep their job as university associated teachers. Those things always remember me the Poochie satire in the Simpsons.

caractacus• 11 years ago

This is the BBC's Newsbeat - it's the news program for Radio 1, the beeb's pop music station. So it's (i) dumbed down and (ii) better if it has some kind of music connection.

bioinformatics• 11 years ago

"Using a Nasa instrument called Crism, Lujendra and his team were able to tell that these 'streaks' are covered with salts."

Hard to believe that an undergraduate at the time would have "his team". He was probably the part of a larger team that gave the undergrads the opportunity to look at the images generated by the equipment, and he was the student who found the evidence. Not saying that he shouldn't be given credit.

Tiksi• 11 years ago

I took that to mean "his team" as in "the team he was part of" as opposed to "the team that he led".

thibaut_barrere• 11 years ago

It didn't happen by accident, but rather because he "(looks) at both visible light and infrared light and based on how different materials absorb light, (he) can compare that with the laboratory data and make some inference about what kind of materials are present.", and before that because he learned the required stuff to end up doing this.

Loughla• 11 years ago

This is the kind of thing that ends up being just another 'don't have to try too hard to succeed' story. It's like Einstein being bad at math.

People like to just believe that brilliance is only possible at random, and nothing they can do will help, unless they get lucky.

It's the same reason the lottery still exists.

littletimmy• 11 years ago

Lottery exists because for some people the thought of being rich is more enticing than the reality of owning an extra buck.

iaskwhy• 11 years ago

But luck does play a bigger role than most would think as one can work as hard as possible and not be lucky enough to succeed. It's hard to define luck though so it might be highly subjective.

squidfood• 11 years ago

People like to just believe that brilliance is only possible at random, and nothing they can do will help, unless they get lucky.

On the other hand, scientists (especially observational scientists) know that there's many many many brilliant scientists in the world, and which one of us actually happens to do the right kind of scan on the right data at the right time can be down to pure, "dumb" luck.

gburt2• 11 years ago

This is more/less the Dunning-Kruger [1] effect in action. From the student's perspective, all of his knowledge is "obvious common sense that everyone has" (this is his error about others).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

nerfhammer2• 11 years ago

Sorry, but over-citation of the Dunning-Kruger effect is a pet peeve of mine.

People seem to think that the Dunning-Kruger effect means "smart people think they're dumb and dumb people think they're smart!" but I don't think that's very accurate.

What they actually found was that lower-skilled people thought their skill level was somewhat higher, and higher-skilled people thought their skill level was a little lower, but not to the point where their relative perceived skill levels inverted. At no point along the skill curve did people incorrectly perceive themselves to be higher or lower in skill level in comparison others who were actually higher or lower in skill. The perceived skill curve was a little less steep than it should have been, that's all.

I think a more appropriate cognitive bias would be the curse of knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

Osmium2• 11 years ago

I haven't been following this too closely. Are the salt streaks where the water is too? Are we actually seeing the water itself in these images or not?

sp332• 11 years ago

Yes, the water is extremely salty (which is why it's not frozen solid) and when it evaporates, it leaves visible salt deposits.

Osmium2• 11 years ago

Thanks for your reply. I've seen an animated image of these salt deposits forming online. It's my understanding these images were taken over a period of several months. Now we know what to look for, would it be possible to watch this happen in real time, or not? Would there be any benefit of a geostationary satellite that just observed the same spot over a long period of time?

xj• 11 years ago

Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés. (In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.)

- Louis Pasteur (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Pasteur)

The student who discovered water on Mars says it was a 'lucky accident'

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