That Study Critiquing NASA’s ‘Bad Science’ on Asteroids Is Pretty Bad Science
On Monday, the New York Times published a piece on Nathan P. Myhrvold, former chief technologist of Microsoft. Myhrvold, who has built a reputation for himself as something of a patent troll, says he’s shown that NASA’s research on asteroids is a mess. Myhrvold has a PhD in physics, but no experience with asteroids — which he says makes him the perfect man to take this bad science down.
Myhrvold’s paper, which he’s made available online, is 110 pages long and has not yet been through the process of peer review — where a study is examined by experts unaffiliated with the research before it’s published. He analyzed the results of NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft (WISE), which has been operating since 2009 and can read the heat signatures of asteroids that may come close to Earth. A mission called NEOWISE translates this heat data into size estimates using empirical models — mathematical models based on things that scientists have observed about individual asteroids.
[Ancient asteroid impact was even bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs, scientists say]
Myhrvold says his study thoroughly debunks the statistical methods NASA scientists use to estimate asteroid size in the NEOWISE mission. They say he has no idea what he’s talking about. In fact, a statement from NASA claims that Myhrvold has made such profound calculation errors that he’s produced notably incorrect size estimates for asteroids that have already been verified using other methods.
“For every mistake I found in his paper, if I got a bounty, I would be rich,” Ned Wright, the principal investigator for WISE at the University of California, told Science Magazine.
More: That study critiquing NASA’s ‘bad science’ on asteroids is pretty bad science