Keith’s 26 March 2024 note: 3 months ago I posted a note about the badly maintained Astrobiology program pages at NASA.gov. Among other things it was not clear who was in charge of NASA’s Astrobiology program, NASA SMD’s public-facing webpages seemed to be uninterested in even mentioning the word “astrobiology” much less sending you to places where you could learn about it, and NASA’s own search engine was not at all helpful and downright misleading. Since then couple of personnel-related things have been fixed but otherwise, if you want to understand what NASA is doing in Astrobiology, you should use Google instead. “Searching for life” in the universe is often cited by NASA – and is one of the most provocative things NASA does – with profound implications. Yet the agency seems to go out of its way to make sure all the existing research and potential stays out of date and hidden inside of badly designed and maintained websites. Go figure. Below is my earlier post with comments about the few things that have been fixed.
Keith’s 30 Dec 2023 note: Imagine you are interested in the whole life in the universe thing at NASA – the program called “astrobiology” (since 1996).” If you google the word you get https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ as the first result. Not bad. My Astrobiology.com website is usually 3rd or 4th in the U.S. sometimes first globally. (I run it from my basement). If you search for “astrobiology” news on Google – well, I win that research result hands down (again, from my basement). Duh – I am interested in the topic and I am writing book about it. But let’s see what happens if you go to NASA.gov ib search of “Astrobiology” – perhaps not knowing that word – but rather the idea of “searching for life in the universe”. Search for “life in the universe” and the first result is about black holes. Not even close – and there is no link to the NASA Astrobiology Program in the top dozen or so results. “Search for life” works better – but there is still no link to the NASA Astrobiology program – the place where this all happens. If you use an earlier term like “exobiology” there is still no direct link. Using “Aliens” takes you to the right place. But try and use the “astrobiology” word and it gets less direct and more confusing – especially if you presume that astrobiology is a major activity at NASA.
Type in “astrobiology” and ask for all of the search results. This is the first result “Search for Life in the Universe“. Eventually you find the link to https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/. By the way – the second search result is for a bibliography, the third is for “Astrobiology graphic novels”, and the fourth is for “NASA coloring books”. Once again the search result relevance begins to wander – fast. But who do you contact if you want to learn more or become involved in NASA’s astrobiology stuff? You can sign up for a newsletter and read some FAQs – but the only person listed as being the NASA official is Lindsay Hayes Lindsay Hays (one letter typo fixed)– And no contact info for her can be found on this page If you search for her name on NASA.gov, then scroll down the search results, guess that “Program Officers List” might help, and then scroll 2 feet down a long list of people you will find her email and phone number. Its already hard to find a actual human to talk to. But what if you go to the NASA Science Mission Directorate page? That is where it all goes down a rabbit hole really fast.
If you go to the main NASA Science Mission Directorate webpage the word “astrobiology” is not mentioned. If you go to the NASA’s Science Vision page it does say “How do planets and life originate?” but the word “astrobiology” appears nowhere. Same thing on the “about us” page. If you go to the official NASA science Mission Directorate org chart (last updated 4 October 2023) the word “astrobiology” appears nowhere. [fixed on 29 Jan 2024 – David Grinspoon is now mentioned but the new graphic is not sized properly for the webpage so part of it is not shown.] Of course the absence of “astrobiology” as a thing that NASA SMD does means that the person in charge of NASA’s Astrobiology Program is not listed and one has to assume, by that absence, that the program is of lesser importance.
So who is actually in charge of NASA’s Astrobiology program? If you go to https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ there is no link to an actual person overtly or indirectly identified as running NASA’s Astrobiology Program. So much for that. Alas, after some Googling I learn that there are some people’s names – Mary Voytek, David Grinspoon, and Caleb Scharf who seem to have been mentioned here and there recently. Let’s see what I found as I searched further. Remember: I already know the answer – I am not a newbie trying to figure this out from scratch. Most people coming to NASA are likely to be newbies.
If you go to this page [fixed] and this page it says that Mary Voytek is at NASA HQ running the NASA Astrobiology Program. Yet this page says she is a “branch chief” (somewhere). This page (about someone else) says that she is “Acting Exobiology Branch Chief at NASA Ames”. On 17 July 2023 NASA SMD AA Nicky Fox tweeted that “Dr. David Grinspoon on his appointment as the new Senior Scientist for @NASAAstrobio Strategy”. This NASA page says “Dr. Grinspoon’s working job title will be Senior Scientist for Astrobiology Strategy (SSAS)”. But if you search NASA for “David Grinspoon” you do not get any news about this appointment or what he has done since arriving at NASA.
If you go to the NASA Astrobiology news page there is no mention of Grinspoon’s appointment or (apparently) of Voytek’s reassignment. But there was an announcement of Caleb Scharf’s appointment as Senior Scientist for Astrobiology at the NASA Ames Research Center. But if you search for him at NASA.gov you get zero search results. [Fixed. Scharf now has 2 search results at NASA.gov]
If you go to the NASA Ames Space Science and Astrobiology page and then click on Exobiology Branch (STX) you get this for Mary Voytek i.e. 2 words: “Branch Chief”. Gee, that’s helpful – especially since she is the number 2 person in this organization. I can’t seem to find “Caleb Scharf’s appointment as Senior Scientist for Astrobiology” at Ames – other than the aforementioned press release – the one that NASA.gov cannot find on its own websites. [Fixed. Scharf now has 2 search results at NASA.gov]
If you know to go to the NASA Astrobiology page and click “FAQ: Who should I contact to learn more about the NASA Astrobiology Program?“ It still says that Mary Voytek runs the program at NASA HQ – no mention of Grinspoon or Scharf.
OK – so who is actually in charge of Astrobiology at NASA? Lindsay Hayes? David Grinspoon? [Fixed] Caleb Scharf?, or Mary Voytek? Who reports to whom? If I was not truly interested in this program (I have been running astrobiology.com since 1996 and was at the original organizing workshops) then who cares, right? But I do care and yet I remain equally baffled at how borderline inept NASA SMD is when it comes to explaining what their Astrobiology program is and where/how to get involved – especially when a multi-billion dollar pair of rovers is on Mars looking for life (that astrobiology thing) and a multi-billion dollar spacecraft is about to head off to Jupiter to do astrobiology. Just sayin’
Keith’s 3 Jan 2024 update: I got a note from NASA HQ PAO asking me to fix a one letter typo in a name in this article. I did. Here is my reply to NASA SMD PAO et al: “Thanks for your official NASA PAO editorial update request. I fixed the typo. I have had my first and last name mutilated for 68 years – so I certainly apologise to Lindsay – I thought I had caught that. I find it rather hilarious and/or pathetic that NASA PAO only responds to a one letter typo in my post – yet does not bother to address the substance of the rest of the posting i.e. the broken search engines, misleading web posts, confusing personnel descriptions, and the apparent shadow banning of “astrobiology” within/across the NASA SMD web presence. If astrobiology was important then one would think that Lindsay’s name would appear on the SMD org chart. It does not. Thanks for offering me a pithy and snarky update to my original post. At least I know that there is one person at NASA who read my post. Now Allard can send me a clean-up email and try to explain all of this and how NASA is still doing web upgrades and trying to improve yada yada yada. I pointed out a lot of issues so I saved you $10,000 in support contractor grunge work. Happy New Year!”
We’ve noticed changes in google’s search engines on the outside. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if that is affecting NASA’s search capabilities on the inside. For an agency that has IT administrators who brag about managing multi billion-dollar budgets as they come and go, I think its sad to read of difficulty finding stuff on nasa.gov
A long time ago my father and I were discussing the many drivers who cut people off and commit other such offenses on the road.
Based on our experiences generally (his more than mine, with him being older), we concluded that such a large number of folks can’t all be so egregiously malevolent. But lots and lots of persons are oblivious regarding others and how their own actions (by omission or commission) affect those others.
I think this persistent issue which you often highlight is of the same nature. Persons, including bureaucrats, are quite often oblivious to what others claim about their own expected duties and responsibilities as they plug along in their jobs. Many, too, live and operate inside the shells of their own perceptions regarding their own duties and responsibilities, and never the twain shall meet. So nothing changes, especially when those above the oblivious are oblivious themselves about particular subsets of their broader purview.
Astrobiology remains small potatoes and so under the radar as far as the larger organization group-thinks about itself. Things likely won’t change…until something waves its appendage at a spacecraft or rover camera.
Most of the post concerns search engine results.
If we take the external search first, there are a couple of factors to keep in mind when criticizing NASA. The search result will differ depending on what you search for and from where. For example, I search from EU – so many search engine capabilities are dropped due to monopoly and security regulations – and have been interested in biology and astrobiology for a long time. An “astrobiology” search returns the UW homepage giving an explanation of “astrobiology” as first return, Wikipedia as second and the NASA Astrobiology home page as third.
There is no obvious problem here. It is likely UW pays for making sure (such as inserting HTML keywords) it is the top hit, but I don’t know how US law impacts universities and agencies in that respect. There is also the aspect that recently, in some respects perhaps due to the regional laws mentioned above and in others perhaps due to the attempts to introduce large language model based searches, search results in general has become worse if I remember quoted research correctly.
If we take the internal search capabilities, they are routinely incapable of returning what you expect from organizations and companies. This is also routinely a problem with large site architecture, it is often difficult to navigate. The best use I can see for NASA web site is when NASA press releases make it to your science news feed, there is no reason to expect it to answer general questions or describe the latest science in some area that interests you. Wikipedia (or Scholarpedia) is the go to site for starting in on that, nowadays obviously complemented with ChatGPT or some other large language model that can help you asking questions you don’t know how to ask.
Perhaps professional astrobiologists can wish for more for their own part, in which case I’m sure they will make their voices heard.