May/June 2009 Issue 146 A Publication for the members of the American Astronomical Society 3 President’s Column AAS Council John Huchra, [email protected] Recognizes As we prepare for Pasadena, I would like to touch on a topic of interest to many members of our Henrietta Leavitt Society. In my last column, I noted that at our January Council meeting we had agreed to work on an AAS ethics statement. No other comment of mine has sparked as much e-mail! Every note addressed the need for more guidelines for our Society and there are even Decadal Survey white papers on 5 the subject. Although somewhat unexpected, on further thought this is not surprising—ethics in its various forms touches every member of our Society. Our statement is still under construction, but let AAS Member me enumerate some of the ethical issues we face. I will also note that a large part of our problem lies in training. How many of you have had any training in the conduct of research or general professional Anniversaries conduct with respect to peers, students and employees? And if you did, do you remember it? There are five basic areas we need to worry about: research conduct, authorship (publications) and peer review, conflicts of interest, professional conduct with respect to people, and societal responsibility. I list these 6 in approximate order of difficulty. Using the The conduct of research is perhaps the easiest. When I was a whippersnapper (read undergraduate) Job Center at we were required as part of our undergraduate physics lab to read E. Bright Wilson’s An Introduction AAS Meetings to Scientific Research. This book told us a bit about keeping records, understanding the statistics of real measurements, and the need to keep in mind that our methods and results need to be described clearly enough so that (1) people understand what we did, (2) people know what the results are and 9 what the limits of the results are, and (3) other people can reproduce our methods as a means to testing those results. As an experimentalist, I have always felt that the key to being a good observer What the Heck is to be absolutely clear as to what my data can show and cannot, i.e. what are the uncertainties and is APSIT? what are the expected systematics. This holds for theory as well, with the need for stating assumptions, uncertainties and priors unwavering. 12 Publications are harder, as I can tell you from my stint as an editor. Authors have a strong tendency to under-attribute, that is not to properly cite both previous ideas and basic data. The phrases “data are Honored available” or “it is known that” should never be used; someone had to work fairly hard to get that data Elsewhere or develop that idea and they deserve credit, even if they are your competitors. Also complicated is the use of master compilations, easy, but again not giving credit where credit is really due. Would you really cite NED for Sloan Digitial Sky Survey redshift data? Credit NED as the compilation, but credit the basic sources whenever you can. I will not touch on plagiarism here but expect it in our final statement. Back page Refereeing is part of the problem too. The health of our field depends on scrubbing results and doing Washington so in a fair manner. An ApJ submission that could not be improved by a good referee’s report is rare. It is important for us to take on these tasks when asked and do the best we can. This applies to refereeing News or reviewing proposals as well. And if you have a conflict of interest, either recuse yourself or, if there is no other option, inform the editor or panel chair or program officer and be sure your review is or gets balanced. Last on this list is the proper acknowledgment of collaborators. There is no clear rule but Insert common sense should apply. This is actually the question most asked of me by students. If someone NASA Federal has made a contribution, however small, including getting the support for the Credit Union project or having the initial idea, they should be acknowledged and perhaps even asked to be co- authors if the contribution is substantial enough. My rule of thumb is to ask people. Conflicts of interest are a difficult subject, fortunately for astronomy not as critical as those in the biomedical profession. Sometimes they can be subtle though, such as writing a tenure letter for someone who is your up and coming competitor. In such a case, generally, the same rules as above hold. Disclose, disclose disclose, so the readers know the background, or recuse with an explanation if that appears to be a better route. Financial (or as they are sometimes know, fiduciary) conflicts are A A simpler. Just do not do it. S continued page 4 AAS Officers and Councilors John P. Huchra, President J. Craig Wheeler, Past-President Robert W. O’Connell, Vice-President From the Executive Office Lee W. Hartmann, Vice-President Christine Jones, Vice-President Kevin B. Marvel, Executive Officer, [email protected] Hervey (Peter) Stockman, Treasurer John A. Graham, Secretary As promised, I am using this column to shine a little light on the nitty-gritty of Richard F. Green, Publications Board Chair Society operations, primarily to help members understand why certain ways of Timothy F. Slater, Education Officer Stephen P. Maran, Press Officer operation are required and why fees are set where they are. Councilors Megan Donahue I want to lead off with Society meetings, which take much of my focus on a Margaret M. Hanson regular basis. First of all, Society meetings are large and complicated. We regularly Chryssa Kouveliotou receive more than 1500 contributed abstracts for our winter meeting, sometimes Felix J. Lockman Nancy Morrison even more than 2500! These abstracts have to be sorted into sessions, which we Marc Postman accomplish with volunteers using a web-based database system. We used to (only Nicholas B. Suntzeff C. Megan Urry six years ago) print them all out on paper and sort them by hand (!). We produce Charles E. Woodward both the BAAS, where the abstracts appear in full and a program with titles and authors only indicating session time and location. The flexibility of the database Executive Office Staff Kevin B. Marvel, Executive Officer system now allows us to make enhancements to our program book. We are still Tracy Beale, Membership Services Administrator experimenting here to make the program highly useful to our meeting attendees. Chris Biemesderfer, Director of Publishing We are getting closer to a great product, but aren’t quite there yet. Send us your Laronda Boyce, Meetings & Exhibits Coordinator Lisa Brown, Financial Assistant ideas if you have something you’d like to see used to enhance the program. Kelly E. Clark, Chief Financial Officer Scott Garvey, Administrative Assistant Kelli Gilmore, Director of Meeting Services The society meetings have a large exhibit hall, which also hosts the poster Scott Idem, Systems & Network Manager presentations and usually has 75 or more exhibitors, each with their own needs Chris W. Irwin, Assistant Systems & Web Admin. and logistical requirements. On the nourishment front, we provide a coffee break Judith M. Johnson, Managing Editor AER & BAAS Faye C. Peterson, Manager, Membership Services with snacks each day of the meeting, have been able to add afternoon snacks as the Crystal M. Tinch, Communications & Development budget allows and hold a large opening reception and banquet. The AAS Newsletter (ISSN 8750-9350) In addition to contributed sessions, we arrange logistics for weekend workshops, is published bi-monthly by the American town hall events, receptions, press events, public events and many splinter Astronomical Society, 2000 Florida Avenue, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20009-1231; meetings of all types. Our meetings boast a comprehensive press room, with press Tel: 202-328-2010, Fax: 202-234-2560, conferences and press releases and even web-based streaming of press conferences [email protected]; www.aas.org. as necessary. All of this activity requires significant logistical preparation, planning The $141.00 annual membership dues for the and support from the AAS staff. It is a wonder we can accomplish all of this with American Astronomical Society include $3.00 the small staff and budget at our disposal. that is applied toward a subscription to the AAS Newsletter. Periodical postage paid at Washington, DC. Speaking of budget, I often overhear conversations at the meeting about the costs POSTMASTER: Send address changes to AAS, of our meetings. Obviously, the up-front cost for the meeting is substantial. When 2000 Florida Ave, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20009-1231. costs of registration approach the cost of the airline ticket to get to the meeting (or exceed it), people rightfully get concerned. Although I can not provide a full- Items of general interest to be considered for publication in the AAS Newsletter should be up analysis of our meeting budgets in this column, let me give you two simple sent to [email protected]. Appropriate pictures are pie charts representing our meeting expenses and meeting revenues. These have welcome. For information about deadlines and submitting articles, see www.aas.org/ caused gasps of amazement from some Council members when I showed them, publications/newsletter.php. Items submitted so sit yourself down. to the AAS Newsletter are not automatically included in the AAS Electronic Announcements or vice versa. Submit electronic announcement items to [email protected]. Judith M. Johnson, Editor Crystal M. Tinch, Associate Editor Jeff Linsky, U. Colorado, Associate Editor, Letters AAS Email Policy To unsubscribe from AAS emails, contact [email protected] For address changes, email [email protected] 2 American Astronomical Society aas.org From the Executive Office continued Looking at our revenue, you can see that our meetings are Next down the line we have the Facility rental charge and paid for primarily by our attendees.