Astronomers fight bias: who gets to use the Webb telescope? | Hacker News Reader

Astronomers fight bias: who gets to use the Webb telescope?

npr.org

4 pointspraash6 comments

> Then, they tried just using initials. Nothing worked.

Any ideas how the gender got through in the initials?

Edit: I guess they just recognized the initials, but nobody else said " 'Oh no, no, come on, let's stick to the science.'"

It seems like the initials would have worked if someone would have just said that during the review process...

Does "initials only" mean "J. D." or "J. Doe"? I'm convinced that the latter form would let reviewers recognize any well known scientist, giving their proposal a massive advantage.

I'm sure a living Stephen Hawking would be granted (quite deserved) access in a heartbeat!

This means astronomers who were already established and well-known got an extra leg up.

Kind of the same story for many fields, TBH. We see it in action right here on HN when there is submission of one of @pg's essays. If those two initials weren't there, would they get the same sort of traction?

The implication is that this is a terribly inequitable thing, but it makes sense that the "already established and well-known" get additional preference. If you had to dole out time, wouldn't you feel more comfortable giving limited resources to groups that have already shown themselves to be effective and productive, given their track record?

> Even before the James Webb Space Telescope was launched, for example, the first call-out for proposals drew 1,173 ideas that would require 24,500 hours of prime observing time. But only 6,000 hours were available.

Can someone explain this to me? I've Google'd and not gotten much. 6000 hours is like 250 days. I thought the Webb has a 10-20 life. So how does that work? How much of each "day" is prime time? and why?

It's only the schedule for the first year of use. 450 hours were already scheduled as top priority, and 6000 more were made available for allocation.

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