"Martin 53N 1W" <ml_news@ddnospamddml1dd.co.uk.dd> wrote in message
news:cst_c.925$352.63@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net...
<snipsnap>

 > Rob Dekker wrote:

I think that everyone active on seti@home deserves at least
full openness after years and years of cranking work units.

[...]

(Corrupted quote from Kryten, Red Dwarf.)

If s@h were not open, they simply would not get funded or otherwise
supported. They are required to back up their work and findings with
peer reviewed scientific papers. They are still active so presumably
they continue to pass the peer review tests and criticisms.


Considering the bare desperation of some to find seti, or to be the
first to find seti, s@h need to be very cautious about what details can
be made public. This is all the more important considering the very
off-line nature of the post signal acquisition analysis. (There's still
data from 1999 still untouched on tape.)

Quite a balancing act between openness, the media, maintaining good hard
cold science, and avoiding being hijacked!

I tend to disagree with you Martin.
I think that actually the opposite is true : the fact that this signal,
which apparently
is a Rio level 0, got to the media and got hiped is an indication that
seti@home
should be a lot more open. There should be hundreds of these signals.
Why not open all of them up, and let everyone analyse them ?
Then the media have no story.. "Seti@home program analyzes 100 potential ET
signals !!".
Naaa. I dont think that's news.

A lot better than this current fiasco where a nothing signal slips out.

But in all this, there is one more problem.
If a narrowband, frequency-shifting signal, weak, but consistent after three
observations, and from the same point in the sky gets discarded as a Rio
level 0 signal, then there is something wrong with the objective (of what we
want to find).

How many years will it take untile we find a level 7 signal ? 10^7 ?
Why would we want to continue with business-as-usual, as Werthimer indicates
?
We need to re-define what we are looking for, and analyze every single
potential signal with fresh open eyes. Dont restrict to looking for a beacon
and discarding anything that does not taste like one.

We have 4 million SETI users. I think it is time for another screensaver..

Rob