NYT on NRC HST Report

December 10th, 2004

Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.

The New York Times noted yesterday,

“After six months of study conducted at Congress’s request, the committee of 21 experts said that a robotic mission would hold too many uncertainties, that it would probably be ready too late to extend the telescope’s life and that it might actually damage the instrument… Astronomers said they were delighted by the experts’ findings.”

Surely The New York Times can do better than simply invoking the generic term “experts”. How about noting the following (and yes, this is an underscore of a point made yesterday):

“… what I’d like to focus on is the characterization of the NRC panel as “outside experts” and the role of NRC in making recommendations to government agencies.

First lets consider the issue of “outside experts.” Presumably, a fair interpretation of the phrase “outside expert” means in this context that the members of the NRC panel are outside of NASA or not subject to benefiting from the decision NASA makes on Hubble. But despite their significant influence on policy, the media (or anyone else for that matter) rarely looks at NRC panels for any actual or perceived conflicts of interest. Of course, the NRC has an internal process that looks at personal financial conflicts of interest (such as owning stock in a company that benefits from a NRC recommendation), but often members of a NRC panel are recipients of government funding for research in areas that they are making recommendations.


Lets take a look at the composition of the NRC Committee on the Assessment of Options for Extending the Life of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The very distinguished panel includes:

- A former director of the Space Telescope Science Institute which manages Hubble.
- A space scientist who has criticized how human spaceflight programs took money from programs such as Hubble
- A scientist who serves on a council that helps to manage Hubble
- An astronaut who helped deploy Hubble from the space shuttle
- Several former NASA employees (e.g., here and here)
- A scientist whose work depends upon Hubble (e.g., here and here)
- A scientist who advocates for space telescope missions.

My point is not that these people are unqualified (they are an impressive bunch), but that they can hardly be characterized as “outside experts.” Almost all have very close ties to NASA or Hubble, including creating, using, or supporting Hubble.”

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