walk. That night he couldn’t sleep.
“I was very upset,” he recalled. “So I reread the preprint again and started cataloging strange things. It didn’t include any detailed analysis of the system’s dynamics, and it barely discussed the 91-day signal. It said that the evidence for GJ 667Cc would be presented in a paper that was in preparation that would be submitted in future, yet it also said this paper had already announced GJ 667Cc—it was a self-contradictory statement that didn’t seem to be a proper way to formalize the discovery.” Looking at the table listing the planet’s orbital parameters, Anglada noticed something odd. The table listed GJ 667Cc’s orbital period as 28 days, but the size of its listed orbit erroneously corresponded to that of an orbit of 91 days, as if GJ 667Cc’s entry had at one time concerned the 91-day rather than the 28-day signal.
“It could all have been coincidence,” Anglada told me. “But I couldn’t help feeling suspicious. If they had seen this signal in their data back in 2008, why did they wait three years, only to announce the planet in such a curious way the week after my HARPS proposal was reviewed? Why did the orbital size and period not match? I started to feel angry, and decided I should go on and push ahead with what I had found.” Within a week, Anglada had completed his paper and submitted it to the Astrophysical Journal Letters , which published it in February 2012—beating the HARPS team to peer-reviewed publication. UC Santa Cruz issued a press release crediting Anglada, Butler, Vogt, and their collaborators with GJ 667Cc’s discovery.
Bonfils and the rest of the HARPS team were aghast. They were the planet’s true discoverers, they argued, as established by their November preprint. The controversy remained unaddressed until June, when Anglada and Bonfils agreed to a private meeting at a coffee shop outside a conference in Barcelona. Bonfils told Anglada that the HARPS team had already known of GJ 667Cc back in 2009 when they had announced their discovery of the system’s other world in a 7-dayorbit. They had submitted their 77-page survey paper for peer-reviewed publication in April of 2009, Bonfils said, but feedback from one of the reviewers had delayed the preprint’s public release until November 2011. Anglada replied that the timing of the preprint was irrelevant, because it did not contain enough detailed information to support the HARPS team’s discovery claims. Anyone could report wobbling stars, but to prove the wobbles were planets they had to show their analytical work. If published analysis was the test, Bonfils countered, then it was one Anglada’s paper had still failed, because it contained the same mistake Butler and Vogt had made with the Gliese 581 system. Pooling HARPS data with that from lesser spectrometers such as HIRES, Bonfils maintained, would degrade the RV data and only increase the likelihood of false alarms; in contrast, the HARPS team’s preprint was a valid discovery paper. By the time they finished their coffees, neither man had given any ground, and the tension between them had only grown.
I reached Bonfils by telephone a month after his meeting with Anglada. He sounded pained.
“They are trying to take credit for a discovery they did not make. It is as basic as that. It’s not by hazard that we found this planet—it was on purpose. GJ 667C is one of our survey’s most-sampled stars. That’s why [Anglada] looked at it. HARPS was built by our team, and the scientific program and observations were done by our team. Most of the data reduction was already done and provided in our public data. I think it would be a pity if the guys who made the instruments and designed and performed the program of observations did not receive credit for their work. I’m a supporter of public data, but I had long feared someone would try to publish our data before us, and it has now happened. Right now this community rests
“I was very upset,” he recalled. “So I reread the preprint again and started cataloging strange things. It didn’t include any detailed analysis of the system’s dynamics, and it barely discussed the 91-day signal. It said that the evidence for GJ 667Cc would be presented in a paper that was in preparation that would be submitted in future, yet it also said this paper had already announced GJ 667Cc—it was a self-contradictory statement that didn’t seem to be a proper way to formalize the discovery.” Looking at the table listing the planet’s orbital parameters, Anglada noticed something odd. The table listed GJ 667Cc’s orbital period as 28 days, but the size of its listed orbit erroneously corresponded to that of an orbit of 91 days, as if GJ 667Cc’s entry had at one time concerned the 91-day rather than the 28-day signal.
“It could all have been coincidence,” Anglada told me. “But I couldn’t help feeling suspicious. If they had seen this signal in their data back in 2008, why did they wait three years, only to announce the planet in such a curious way the week after my HARPS proposal was reviewed? Why did the orbital size and period not match? I started to feel angry, and decided I should go on and push ahead with what I had found.” Within a week, Anglada had completed his paper and submitted it to the Astrophysical Journal Letters , which published it in February 2012—beating the HARPS team to peer-reviewed publication. UC Santa Cruz issued a press release crediting Anglada, Butler, Vogt, and their collaborators with GJ 667Cc’s discovery.
Bonfils and the rest of the HARPS team were aghast. They were the planet’s true discoverers, they argued, as established by their November preprint. The controversy remained unaddressed until June, when Anglada and Bonfils agreed to a private meeting at a coffee shop outside a conference in Barcelona. Bonfils told Anglada that the HARPS team had already known of GJ 667Cc back in 2009 when they had announced their discovery of the system’s other world in a 7-dayorbit. They had submitted their 77-page survey paper for peer-reviewed publication in April of 2009, Bonfils said, but feedback from one of the reviewers had delayed the preprint’s public release until November 2011. Anglada replied that the timing of the preprint was irrelevant, because it did not contain enough detailed information to support the HARPS team’s discovery claims. Anyone could report wobbling stars, but to prove the wobbles were planets they had to show their analytical work. If published analysis was the test, Bonfils countered, then it was one Anglada’s paper had still failed, because it contained the same mistake Butler and Vogt had made with the Gliese 581 system. Pooling HARPS data with that from lesser spectrometers such as HIRES, Bonfils maintained, would degrade the RV data and only increase the likelihood of false alarms; in contrast, the HARPS team’s preprint was a valid discovery paper. By the time they finished their coffees, neither man had given any ground, and the tension between them had only grown.
I reached Bonfils by telephone a month after his meeting with Anglada. He sounded pained.
“They are trying to take credit for a discovery they did not make. It is as basic as that. It’s not by hazard that we found this planet—it was on purpose. GJ 667C is one of our survey’s most-sampled stars. That’s why [Anglada] looked at it. HARPS was built by our team, and the scientific program and observations were done by our team. Most of the data reduction was already done and provided in our public data. I think it would be a pity if the guys who made the instruments and designed and performed the program of observations did not receive credit for their work. I’m a supporter of public data, but I had long feared someone would try to publish our data before us, and it has now happened. Right now this community rests
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