Clickbait Frenzy Over 50 Year Old NASA Planetary Protection Officer Position
– NASA is hiring a planetary protection office to save Earth from aliens, Newsweek
– NASA wants to pay someone astronomical sums to do something that is out of this world, The Blaze
– NASA Hiring ‘Planetary Protection Officer’ to Prevent Alien Invasion, NBC 6
– You Can Now Apply For a 6-Figure NASA Job Defending Earth From Alien Contamination, Money Magazine
– Leave your tin-foil hat at home: NASA needs a Planetary Protection Officer, WTOP
– Planetary Protection Officer (job description), USAJobs
“This position is assigned to Office of Safety and Mission Assurance for Planetary Protection. Planetary protection is concerned with the avoidance of organic-constituent and biological contamination in human and robotic space exploration. NASA maintains policies for planetary protection applicable to all space flight missions that may intentionally or unintentionally carry Earth organisms and organic constituents to the planets or other solar system bodies, and any mission employing spacecraft, which are intended to return to Earth and its biosphere with samples from extraterrestrial targets of exploration. This policy is based on federal requirements and international treaties and agreements.”
Keith’s note: All these goofy clickbait headlines about aliens. So little journalistic or editorial research. This position was created in 1967. It was originally called “Planetary Quarantine Officer” and Larry Hall was the first person to fill the position. In 1986 the position’s name was changed to “Planetary Protection Officer”. NASA has had someone in this position for half a century. The salary range is standard government scale. Fake news.
We should start calling that position the MIB Director. 😉
Actually, the BBC story quoted the outgoing PPO. She said, on her first day, someone did give her a pair of Men in Black sunglasses.
By the way, the BBC story was fairly good. But it was half a serious story on planetary protection and half making fun of the coverage by the American press.
Just shows why you should not use a general news sites for science news.
Certainly true for those with the slightest grounding in science; but alas the general population is subject to not only ill-searched reporting, but to over-the-top characterization of the news.
This story and the position it describes couldn’t be more important. Oh, sure, it’s buried in the NASA innards; but what’s more crucial than avoiding contact with any sort of bug or biology for which Earth is not prepared? Nothing, that’s what, and the frivolous coverage just pisses me off.
The lack of accurate details goes beyond science news. Most news sources don’t provide many details about other issues as well. Consider the reporting over the recent health care bills in the Senate (the _reporting_, this isn’t the place to argue about the bills themselves.) How much media coverage went to who was for or against, and which senator voted which way? How much media coverage went to the actual content and details of the bills? The former got quite a bit more attention than the later.
I’m thinking that the term ‘fake news’ ought to be reserved for…well, fake news. The number of folks at the inauguration, as an instance, or the incidence of voter fraud (approaches zero), or the idea that protesters at election rally were bussed in.
The term is also reserved by the President to mean news that he disagrees with, true or not; he frequently talks about the “main stream media” as purveyors of “fake news”, denigrating an institution entirely capable of denigrating itself.
In the case of these stories about aliens we are simply observing lazy journalism.
Cute though.
Yeah I agree, there was/is actual fake news.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/ne…
We should just give it to this kid. He has Moxy https://uploads.disquscdn.c…