Reaction To The Announcement
The same day as the MPC publication, Brown's group announced the discovery of another Kuiper belt object, Eris, more distant and larger than Pluto, as the tenth planet. The announcement was made earlier than planned to forestall the possibility of a similar events with that discovery, when the MPC told them that their observational data was publicly accessible, and they realized that not only Haumea data but by that time their Eris data had been publicly accessed. The same day Ortiz announced the discovery of Haumea, Brown submitted his own draft with the data on the first of its moons that he had discovered on January 26, 2005 to The Astrophysical Journal.
Brown, though disappointed at being scooped, congratulated the Ortiz team on their discovery. He apologized for immediately overshadowing their announcement of Haumea with his announcement of Eris, and explained that someone had accessed their data and he was afraid of being scooped again. Ortiz did not volunteer to tell that it had been him. Upon learning from web server records that it was a computer at the Sierra Nevada Observatory that had accessed his observation logs the day before the discovery announcement—logs which included enough information to allow the Ortiz team to precover Haumea in their 2003 images—Brown came to suspect fraud. He emailed Ortiz on August 9 and asked for an explanation. Ortiz did not respond, and on August 15 the Caltech team filed a formal complaint with the IAU, accusing the Ortiz team of a serious breach of scientific ethics in failing to acknowledge their use of the Caltech data, and asked the MPC to strip them of discovery status. Ortiz later admitted he had accessed the Caltech observation logs but denied any wrongdoing, stating this was merely part of verifying whether they had discovered a new object. Brown began to wonder if the Spanish team had actually identified Haumea at all before they saw his own abstract and telescope log.
Read more about this topic: Controversy Over The Discovery Of Haumea
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