NASA uses computer model to find exoplanets
Garbage in, garbage out: Using statistical computer modeling only, NASA today announced that they are certain that almost a third of Kepler’s candidate exoplanets are really exoplanets.
Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope’s July 2015 planet candidate catalog, which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 percent – the minimum required to earn the status of “planet.” An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99 percent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates previously verified by other techniques.
This is actually a stupid announcement. They haven’t learned a damn thing from this statistical analysis, but are merely saying that because Kepler found a lot of candidates, a lot of those candidates must be real planets. Worse, NASA is also implying here that confirming some of these candidate exoplanets by hard observations is now really unnecessary, since they can do it statistically.
This smacks of the corruption that has ruined much of climate research, allowing a computer model to replace actual observations. Big mistake. But I also suspect this announcement occurred for the same reasons: NASA wishes to justify its work and its funding, and thus decided to make a big deal about this very minor statistical analysis in order to puff up the discoveries of Kepler, even though there is no reason to do so.
I expect a lot of mainstream news organizations to write big puff pieces extolling this announcement in the coming days, which will once again prove that almost no one in journalism today has the slightest ability to apply their own independent analysis to the press releases they receive.
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Garbage in, garbage out: Using statistical computer modeling only, NASA today announced that they are certain that almost a third of Kepler’s candidate exoplanets are really exoplanets.
Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope’s July 2015 planet candidate catalog, which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 percent – the minimum required to earn the status of “planet.” An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99 percent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates previously verified by other techniques.
This is actually a stupid announcement. They haven’t learned a damn thing from this statistical analysis, but are merely saying that because Kepler found a lot of candidates, a lot of those candidates must be real planets. Worse, NASA is also implying here that confirming some of these candidate exoplanets by hard observations is now really unnecessary, since they can do it statistically.
This smacks of the corruption that has ruined much of climate research, allowing a computer model to replace actual observations. Big mistake. But I also suspect this announcement occurred for the same reasons: NASA wishes to justify its work and its funding, and thus decided to make a big deal about this very minor statistical analysis in order to puff up the discoveries of Kepler, even though there is no reason to do so.
I expect a lot of mainstream news organizations to write big puff pieces extolling this announcement in the coming days, which will once again prove that almost no one in journalism today has the slightest ability to apply their own independent analysis to the press releases they receive.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
It started with “social science”, moved to psychology and psychiatry, proceeded to envelop medicine and then biochemistry, and then into what *should* be a “hard science”, whose name change to “climate science” in the late 1970s-mid 1980s should have warned us. Now it is proceeding to overtake every scientific field that must get their political masters’ attention by public fluff announcements. It destroys the recognition of the necessity of replication in science, and enthrones “peer review” in both funding and publication.
Until the monopsony of government in funding science is decisively broken, this willl proceed to degrade the ability to trust results. In this case, we will have to wait till space launch becomes cheap enough, and space manufacturing common enough, that private sources can fund space telescopes to replicate this work. It may even be true!
Has anyone calculated the odds that a planet would pass between us and their sun? That planet would be large enough to be detected and yet have such a small orbital time that it can be replicated enough to be verified?
I would think this would be an extremely rare occurrence. I go with Ochman’s razor, a more simpler explanation. Large sunspots for example would change the brightness of a star.
I’m not saying the data is incorrect rather agreeing with Tom. Orbital telescopes. Observations needs to be verified. Computer manipulation does not reassure me.
The alien life story is certainly over done in today’s astronomy. It might backfire if nothing is found. It is however not fair to compare astronomical models with climate science models. The climate is a complex mystery while astrophysics is so extremely efficient that it is somewhat of a philosophical problem of why it is so. Transiting exoplanets is a game of statistics. Some exoplanets are observed directly, but with transits one can only talk about averages and not about any particular planet. Continuously adjusting these statistical averages is not a problem for science. This particular uncertainty of science is deliberate and completely under control.
Could it be that NASA is saying that their computer models correlate so well with other means of detection, that those computer models can replace the other techniques and free the equipment for other fields of investigation?
Have you not learned by now?
Stop doubting the computer and its models.
We should all place out full confidence in Big Circuit.
Next, they will statistically reclassify a percentage as “dwarf planets.” Isn’t this politically incorrect?
Related Topic–
Dr. Pedro Domingos
“…on Machine Learning and the Master Algorithm.”
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/05/pedro_domingos.html