【Outreach亂講嘢就要科學家執手尾】
因為上月有好多outreach人士周圍散播「金星可能有生命」嘅謠言，國際天文聯會天體生物學委員會特地發聲明予以駁斥和澄清，並提醒科學家和outreach人士緊記科學傳播的道德。
The commission F3 (Astrobiology) of the IAU has issued a statement on the possible detection of a single phosphine (PH3) line in the Venusian atmosphere.
link:
https://www.iau.org/static/science/scientific_bodies/commissions/f3/commission-f3-statement-5-october-2020.pdf
“... The Commission is concerned with the way the potential detection of phosphine has been covered for the broad audience. It is an ethical duty for any scientist to communicate with the media and the public with great scientific rigor and to be careful not to overstate any interpretation which will be irretrievably picked up by the press and generate great public attention in the case of life beyond Earth. The way results about phosphine were reported lead some news organization to report that evidence for life in Venus was found. The Commission understands that such a reaction by the press would reflect high interest in astrobiology research by the public. Such a report, however, misleads the public, and might be harmful to the advancement of astrobiology research.
Finally the Commission would like to remind the relevant researchers that we need to understand how the press and the media behave before communicating with them. It is quite important for any researcher to keep a good relationship with the press since they have great power to disseminate our research results to the public. We, researchers, should provide the press with sufficient background information so that they can report our research outcomes as faithfully and scientifically as possible.”
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