Another confirmation of the existence of dark energy.

[Andrzej Marecki]

> Instead of:
> 
> > ... and many
> > have been reluctant to accept the
> > results of the supernovae teams.
> >
> > Now, a team of 27 astronomers led by
> > Professor George Efstathiou of the
> > University of Cambridge has published
> > strong evidence for the existence of
> > dark energy using an entirely different
> > technique. They used the clustering...
> 
> there should have been something like
> 
> < ... and many
> < have been reluctant to accept the
> < results of the supernovae teams.
> <
> < However, several teams from around the world
> < have published strong evidence for the
> < existence of dark energy using entirely different techniques.
> <
> < One of these is a team of 27 astronomers led by
> < Professor George Efstathiou of the
> < University of Cambridge. They used the clustering...
> 
> Wouldn't this have been more honest?

YES, IT CERTAINLY WOULD!!!

But...

although I have no interest in defending RAS I think it is always  
honest to tend to narrow down the responsibility to particular persons.
In this case the person to blame is the *referee* who allowed the 
authors to ommit the reference(s) to other groups work. 

Now the good question emerges: who on Earth wrote that $&%@ PR??!!!
The authors of the original paper themselves?

[...]

> Well, I don't know about spaceflightnow.com in particular, but since
> our research work does not directly threaten any large authoritarian
> corporations or authoritarian governments or democratic governments,
> except indirectly because it shows that people in a non-US/UK country
                                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> do good science, I think that if one or more people were willing to
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> spend the time talking to journalists and explaining stuff to them,
> e.g. via cosmo-media, then there's actually a fairly good chance they
> would publish stuff.

IMO the best way to show that is... to publish in US/UK journals.
If Roukema, Mamon & Bajtlik paper were published in MNRAS and not in 
A&A then maybe... ;-)

But OK, you're right, we have to talk to journalists and explain things to
them. Preferably we have to talk to US/UK journalists... Because if we
talk e.g. to Polish journalists then there is hardly any impact. Example:
recently Udalski et al. discovered a few dozens of extraterrestrial plants
in "one go". There was a large (front page) coverage of this discovery in
the largest Polish daily newspaper. Now how about spaceflightnow.com et al.?
NOTHING! So maybe there *is* an Anglo-American mafia censorship. But
maybe not. If only Udalski et al. published in ApJ or MNRAS and not in
Acta Astronomica.... :-)

--
Andrzej