Space agencies like ESA need to constantly justify their budgets to governmental funders. They need to "hype" their Earth Observation missions and the associated data sets. If they stop hyping the missions, scientists will get fewer missions. We desperately need the missions! They're critical for understanding climate change, and then acting on it. I want ESA to hype its missions hard, all the time.
As a publicly-funded scientist, it's my job to impartially analyse and appraise the missions and derived data sets. It's not my job to hype the missions. It's actually not my job to hype anything!
This introduces an obvious tension.
Many EO scientists rely on ESA funding. ESA opens a funding call (an ITT in the jargon), and then picks teams of scientists to allocate money to. It funds postdocs, fellowships, fieldwork; it funds academic success.
So as a scientist seeking to work with or for ESA, why not just hype the mission a bit? Even if ESA doesn't care**, it can't hurt, right? Write about the insights rather than the uncertainty? Report the r score rather than the r2? Use words like "measure" rather than "estimate"? We all want to be positive and supportive about research. Why be "that guy" who focuses on the limitations rather than possibilities?
This tension represents a market failure. Mission hyping doesn't cost scientists, but it does cost science. Data users become overconfident in EO products. Engineers and administrators hear that spaceborne instruments are more effective and useful than they are, and this spawns follow-on missions when we should be innovating instead. As EO scientists, we're trusted to judge with sceptical eyes, not starry eyes.
I'd like to see the money allocated by ESA on EO research be instead allocated by (inter)national funders and panels that are independent of ESA. This would disincentivize the culture of mission hype. That's a big ask, and unlikely to happen. A small ask for right now: EO scientists should be wary of when they and others are "hyping the mission". Better yet, we should reflect on why it's happening when we see it.
Here is a cool brochure that ESA just released. It's called "Earth Observation - Groundbreaking Science Discoveries". I'm glad that they're hyping the missions so that I don't have to.
https://lnkd.in/dQxCfUaQ
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**For what it's worth, my experience is that ESA actually doesn't care about this, to its credit. I was recently selected to be on the CRISTAL mission advisory group with a very poor (negative?) track record of hype for satellite radar altimeters.