NASA's Astrobiology Program Needs An Outreach Reset

Keith’s note: The official Twitter account for NASA SMD’s Astrobiology program @NASAAstrobio posted several tweets earlier today about a Astrobiology paper – and then deleted the tweets. Then they reposted the tweets. Today’s NASA article refers to a NASA-authored paper “Call For A Framework For Reporting Evidence For Life Beyond Earth”. FYI this paper has actually been openly available since 23 July 2021 on on arXiv and is still online. I posted a link to this paper on Astrobiology.com back when it was posted in July. Yet in this web posting about the article NASA makes no mention of a link to this paper – in an article they wrote that tells you about this paper being published in Nature. Strange.
NASA tweeted a link to the free online version of the article but then they tweeted a link to the pay-only version at Nature. If you ask NASA PAO they say that no one at NASA is supposed to link anywhere that sends business to a company. But by telling taxpayers to go to a link at Nature – one that overtly asks for money – they are doing exactly that. NASA makes up rules that it then ignores.

Update – 6 hours after they first told people about this article on a new Astrobiology Framework, NASA now posted a link to a shared article but you cannot download the article or copy text from it. Taxpayers paid for this document but they are not being given true open access. In other words look but don’t touch. Luckily there is an earlier free version online here at arXiv.

The bigger question is why NASA SMD PAO did not post a link to this paper when it was posted online in July – both on Astrobiology.com and also on arXiv – a scholarly website – both with free global access.
Why is NASA so shy about linking to the external (real) world when it comes to mention of what it is doing in Astrobiology? In this case they post a paper – about their own Astrobiology program – and do so online such that anyone could read it for months but they don’t tell anyone. Why write the paper in the first place if you are not going to tell anyone about it?
But wait, there’s more: NASA JPL posted this release today “How to Find Hidden Oceans on Distant Worlds? Use Chemistry” which is overtly focused on a key aspect of NASA’s Astrobiology program as it searches for life on ocean worlds here and in other solar systems. Yet NASA can’t seem to use the word “Astrobiology” in the release or link to NASA’s Astrobiology program. Oh yes, the article announcing the information contained in this release “Unveiling shrouded oceans on temperate sub-Neptunes via transit signatures of solubility equilibria vs. gas thermochemistry” was also posted on astro-ph.EP on 10 August 2021 – more than 2 months ago. Again, anyone on Earth with Internet access could read this article for months yet NASA only got around to mentioning it now? Oddly this NASA press release can link to a NASA-funded article posted on arXiv while the other NASA web article I mentioned cannot link to a previously posted article on arXiv. Where is the consistency?
NASA has a rather strange way of telling the external world about what it is doing in Astrobiology – a program with the charter to study one of the most important questions in science. It tries to hide its own papers that people have already read and can’t even link to its own Astrobiology program. NASA has a weird habit of hiding some of its best – and most profound news. How is this in the best interest of the research community or the taxpayers who pay for all of this?
As you can see from these posts in just the past several years, NASA’s Astrobiology Program neglects itself and has a bad habit of hiding its own good news,
– Bill Nelson Talks About The SETI Program That NASA Does Not Have
– Astrobiology News That NASA’s Astrobiology Program Ignores
– NASA’s Astrobiology Program Continues To Neglect Itself
– NASA Tries To Explain Its Astrobiology Shyness, earlier post
– NASA’s Astrobiology Program Works Hard To Ignore Itself, earlier post
– NASA Leads In Astrobiology. It Needs To Act That Way., earlier post
– NASA Can’t Figure Out What Astrobiology Is – Or Who Does It, earlier post
– Getting Serious About Astrobiology, earlier post
– More NASA Astrobiology News That Ignores NASA’s Astrobiology Program, earlier post
– NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Has An Issue With Certain Words, earlier post
– NASA’s Big Astrobiology Mission To Europa Makes No Mention Of Astrobiology, earlier post
– NASA Makes Big Astrobiology Mission Announcement Without Saying “Astrobiology”, earlier post
– NASA Leads The World In Astrobiology. Wow, Who Knew?, earlier post
– 3 New Life Forms Discovered On The Space Station. NASA Yawns In Response., earlier post
– Sadly NASA Forgets Its Most Amazing Missions, earlier post
– That Time NASAWatch Scooped The Water On Mars Story, earlier post
– This Is Not The Planetary Protection Headline That NASA Needs Right Now (Update), earlier post