Not making someone miss out on science

I feel bad to miss everyone's talks and posters at the IAU conference because I had to stand outside the door for two weeks, but I thank everyone who came to see my presentation on the double peaks and a new gap in the periods of planets that depend so much on iron abundance. I have come every day for two weeks to join in a conference with my colleagues, only to be kept out because being completely unemployed I don't even have my own money to pay for the registration fee.

The bigger issue is that science community must develop procedures collaborating groups to bring back into the group someone who has been randomly kept out by their organization. I have been kept “out the door” not just from one observatory but also from the larger collaborations such as Kepler that I had worked so hard to prepare LCOGT to join. Groups must not tolerate having authors keeping out someone because their organization lacks internal protections. I published my request for groups to “Go around the observatory” (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.3283.pdf). Paper authors should either find an alternative way to bring in someone being ostracized by another author or require that author to not ostracize any important contributors. Papers must not be considered to have undergone peer review if someone with a significant part has been kept out. Ethics statements that say all those who have contributed “intellectually” must be amended to disallow using not talking to or sharing data with a target of ostracism to contrive claims that an unwanted person has not contributed “intellectually.” I challenge the credibility of papers where author participation has been contrived to keep me from continuing my contributions.

I have been literally outside the door from writing papers just as much as I have been kept standing outside the door of the IAU conference with no way, not even using my own salary, to pay the registration fee. This has been because of being kept out of doing the science I planned for our LCOGT group to do.

By standing outside, I have demonstrated the importance of requiring procedures that protect inclusivity. I am showing the importance of being able to question keeping people out, and my disappointment at being pressured to cover up and not challenge the authority of those who stopped me from finishing LCOGT photometry.

I participated the best I could in the IAU conference just as I have tried hard to not be stopped from working with the groups I helped LCOGT join. I hope to start a discussion on not being a part of keeping someone out, even if that someone has been a part of another institution.

It is awkward to be inclusive when one author does not want to include another person, but being inclusive means not going along with keeping someone else out. This includes bringing in someone that another author's organization wants kept out.

Follow my job search: Do I get inside or am I left giving my presentation outside the door?

I invite you to follow my job search in astronomy.

This week, you can follow: Do I get inside the conference, or am I left holding signs begging at the door? More important, do I get to join the research groups that produce the papers needed to get a job in science?

After the conference, follow me on whether I get to join writing the papers that I have been kept out from doing. Follow whether I get to join the collaborations that have not let me in due to LCOGT keeping me out, starting with TESS and Kepler.

I am taking my Campaign for Participation to twitter, where I hope you will retweet me. I'm in my 7th of being kept out, but being outside the door represents being kept out of not just LCOGT, but kept out of the collaborations with groups like Kepler, TESS, and the Palomar Transient Factory that I was the first astronomer at LCOGT to prepare our observatory to join.

In order to get another job, I need papers, and for papers, I need collaborators to “Go around the observatory” and bring me into groups writing papers that I was poised to join when LCOGT unexpectedly forced me to leave after seeing signs of me having a disability. I have been asking Kepler, TESS, and other groups to give me the chance I have been working hard for. (I do thank WASP for starting to work with me in 2010 based on that I had contributed to LCOGT data that it was not sharing with me, but I feel Kepler and TESS should bring me “inside the door” just like WASP was willing to.) True, I now have more expertise on planet distributions than from the photometry work I had been doing with LCOGT since 2005 since LCOGT gives global telescope data to these groups before allowing me, the first astronomer actually working at LCOGT telescopes, to see it.

The greatest victory from a paper, though, is getting one from the project I have done all by myself – though I would like collaborating co-authors. Currently, that is getting a paper done on planet distributions. I've tried several times to publish in this new area that I have tried to develop as a replacement to doing the photometry I was doing in LCOGT, but starting over in a new area home alone with no support has really been tough. Being thrown out is extremely disabling to anyone's concentration, and not being allowed to stay with the same research has disrupted my concentration worse. So I am grateful for all the encouragement people can give.

I am still looking for trip sponsors using crowdfunding by asking people to share this blog with this new "Let me inside" URL shortener to my Indiegogo crowdfunding:  http://tinyurl.com/letmeinside .

I hope that I am not kept outside for the last two days of the conference – but whether I get in or kept out, I will show you the pictures!

Is the IAU registration fee too expensive?

Standing outside the conference door holding my poster and talking to people as they go in, I am getting a lot of praise for, without intending to, making a statement on the price of the registration fee. Paying $700 is hard even for people with grants, so I will start the discussion: Isn't there a way to have a conference without such high fees? Do we really need to have this fancy of a convention center? Even if we need a really big convention center for a few functions, do we really need it for so many days? 

This was not the statement that I had intended by standing outside, but I am glad if so many support me "begging for donations" as statement that this conference is too expensive. Still, I am very sad to have to miss all of your talks, even if you do get to see my presentation outside. 

So if you did not come to this site through the Facebook Astronomers page, please look through my other posts to find my "Let me inside" crowdfunding link, and then share it. I've removed the link from just this post because that page does not allow solicitations. But I suppose I can mention in this post that I am trying crowdfunding, not at a significant level from astronomers, but in hopes that my friends and colleagues can help me find larger sources of support.

What about holding most of the big meeting in schools rented throughout a city? Surely there are less expensive venues. If such venues are not now readily available, could scientists advertise that we are really looking for cities to find more reasonable ways to hold large scientific meetings. Many also comment on the expense of hotels in Honolulu, saying there is not a good choice of lower cost hotels. Perhaps some lower priced cities could see this as a way to get more business.

I suspect that the Hawaii Convention Center (HCC) does not want this brought up. I wonder if the AAS does not want this brought up. It is a beautiful building but it is a big expensive building that if you look at its schedule, it is not used much. I'm told that some Hawai'i taxpayers are upset about the use of so much state money being used to build it. 

I have a volunteer who I discussed this with on video -- please pardon that the interview got broken into two pieces:
Here on YouTube: Fees too high video, part 1 of 2  Fees too high video, part 2 of 2

Let's have a discussion on the cost of conferences and what might be done. 

Reason to get into conference: Join the collaborations everyone else did, and job searching.

Whether I get into the conference or not, I can use my place out in front to promote my job search. I want it to be a job search that everyone watches, because unless my job search is well known, there is no way to overcome that I was kept from getting a good record of finishing the important research I started at LCOGT.

So I made new flyers today to emphasize both helping me with my job search but also helping me get back into joining the groups such as TESS and Kepler that the others at LCOGT had the chance to join, but that the first astronomer was kept out by LCOGT keeping me from accessing our data and stopping talking with me. The Science Director effectively told me to leave trying to enter exoplanet astronomy. So now with good results on exoplanet distributions, I am challenging being kept out of working with these groups.

I now have a more memorable “redirect” link to my long Indiegogo crowdfunding site to get me funded to go inside the IAU conference: http://tinyurl.com/letmeinside . “Let Me Inside” is easy enough to remember, as long as people can also remember tinyurl. I also have a new link for this blog: http://tinyurl.com/letmeparticipate drives home the point that I was working for many years to be a part of the Kepler to TESS program, and also sought out other groups as well, so I am due the same chance as everyone else that provided LCOGT photometry to Kepler and TESS papers. The message to TESS and Kepler is that the LCOGT work that Tim Brown and those under him claimed to provide also came from Stuart F. Taylor, and the *only* reason I was not sending it them with Tim Brown and postdocs was that Tim Brown was hiding the data from me. I was the one who had worked on the FTN telescope the longest, so normal scientific practice was for him to share LCOGT data with me. TESS and Kepler can find another way for me to contribute if they're uncomfortable asking LCOGT why they're keeping out their first astronomer, but all of the other groups should not simply follow LCOGT's black list.

Why am I seeking to have my job search watched online? It has been because I was put into having to make a lose-lose decision when applying for jobs: say nothing and let people think I didn't finish on my own, or explain that the observatory created a situation that made it impossible for me to finish. Both choices have not worked, so it's better to beg for social media attention to get many people watching whether the astronomy community will support me having a reasonable chance at being employed again.

I have missed the experience of working with the groups that I persuaded the Director of LCOGT that his new observatory should work with. I had discussed openly with him that I was new to exoplanet photometry, so he knew that since I had done other projects in the past, that I did not have a previous photometry job to fall back on when he took away my participation in photometry.

So this is why I am stuck outside the meeting doing an "outside the door" poster presentation: without papers has meant being without a job which has meant I have had no way to support paying the costs of an astronomy meeting. Now I hope that having a job search that is more public, that when collaborating groups of LCOGT write papers, they will be encouraged to keep no one out.

Coming blog posts:

- Feedback from attendees that the conference is much too expensive -- including a video from an attendee.

- The anti-TMT "protectors" had what I would say was their first day that they interacted with astronomers, since the Convention Center security kept them away from the front of the Center (I don't know how the Center could keep them off public property).

- The Convention Center tried to stop me from handing out flyers "without a permit." Not even a business card. They do not understand freedom of speech on public property means people can hand out information. That is unbelievable. They can call the police on someone handing out flyers, but it will make them look bad. I'm looking for reporters to record them try to stop flyers. I've researched this point, and it turns out that Honolulu has a history of previously stopping passing out of "handbills," but they have lost cases in court, so now citizens are free to exercise their freedom of speech to hand out flyers.

Let me inside!

Link to crowdfunding site on Indiegogo now has a shorter redirect:  http://tinyurl.com/letmeinside

Outdoor Poster Presentation

I am now showing giving the "Outdoor Poster Presentation" with my full science poster printed and laminated so I can carry it. Here is the slightly updated printed version:

Missing Planets! The Participation Gap

Credit to a conference attendee

For Day 2, I started the “Outside Session” of science talks not let inside. The outside poster session, where I put the highlight of my approved poster in my sign: There are missing planets of iron-rich stars at distances that have periods of 653 to 923 days. Clear out the trash, and there are no planets there that are not going around iron-poor stars! Zero! None! Yes, of course, since there are only less than 100 iron-rich planets that I am looking at, a few will probably be found, but I show that the distribution of a double peak separated by this deep gap is better than one in a thousand confidence of being real. What's “the trash” I swept under the rug here? Any planet whose star has another star as a companion, to start with. I am not the only one to have shown that the planets of binary stars are distributed differently: I find them more mixed, showing some but not other patters. I also threw out stars that have too low of gravity, usually because they're old and getting fat, I mean, their radii are getting larger. I also restrict the temperature range to stars not too different from the sun.

I am looking a little at the other stars, the “trash”, and am already seeing them to be “one (wo)man's trans is another's treasure.” In 2013 I found an exception to the newly discovered trend of higher eccentricity among planets hosted by iron-rich stars.

It was my 2012/2013 discovery of that “eccentricity-iron” correlation, also found independently (at close to the same time) by two others (Dawson and Murray-Clay, 2013), that shifted me to study patterns in planets at all periods. Before then, I have been primarily paying attention to the populations of planets closest to the star, following the line of looking at planets going into stars, or “planet destruction.”

Now, I will go pick up a laminated version of my poster, to continue my “outside poster session.” Laminated, because a typhoon is coming, and yes I will present my poster in the rain!

Cheer me on, and please share this blog with as many friends as you can!

Astronomers: If you see me, can we take pictures together? Thanks to all those who have taken pictures!

How does it feel to be kept outside?

How does it feel to be left out? Take a look at these pictures by an astronomer kept out of science by other scientists. These pictures are of me being kept outside the conference,” doing a campaign to get the support to be in the conference.

I am looking for sponsors who could make the difference in whether I can do science, or if I'll have to give in and do desperation jobs that don't support doing research. There are prizes with big money, given to scientists who have already been paid well, raised by the big societies and other philanthropists. How about rewarding a scientist who will be forced to quit if no one sponsors him? My goal of presenting my work outside at the door is to get enough notice to attract sponsors: people who will crowd-fund me. I am not expecting the fellow astronomers walking in the door to contribute the big amounts that it takes (though every little couple-dollar donation builds momentum) but I am asking astronomers and people on the street to share this blog, and the link to my Indiegogo campaign.

I started my campaign on Day 1 of the IAU conference with a begging to not be kept out, asking astronomers to use social media to “share” my blog.

As I was campaigning, these pictures of myself reflected in the glass in front of the conference logo, and another in front of the registration desk, presented themselves to me. The pictures of me reflected on the outside with other astronomers on the inside illustrates one person being kept out by the group.

I must remark that having to do this is also an illustration that circumstances are too hard in astronomy, not just for me but for many others. I am of course not the only one struggling – many others tell me of having to “use their own money” though so far no one has said they're using their own money while not making any money for a long time. I hope these pictures will provoke some careful discussion of the situation of American science.  

Pardon that I post twice as once, but "Belonging" and my science of "Missing Planets" are two subjects each deserving one post.

In Honolulu to start "Battle for Belonging" Campaign by going to IAU meeting missing reneged on support

I've made it to Honolulu where the IAU meeting starts tomorrow. I have a great presentation all ready to go. But I'll have to present my work on the street, until I get enough people to contribute to my campaign through Indiegogo Life, at https://life.indiegogo.com/fundraisers/battle-for-belonging-attend-astronomy-conference--2/

I will be blogging about:
1. An upbeat part, why I am coming: I have great results, and
2. A challenged part, why I am going to have to stand outside the door, begging for the support necessary to go in.

My upbeat part is the discovery of a gap in the occurrence distribution of giant planets hosted by stars more iron-rich than the sun ("iron-rich" systems) that does not occur in the iron-poor system planets (where I emphasize I only refer to the iron abundance of the host stars, not of the planets, which we don't know very well yet). I published finding this gap in 2013, but only now fully present that if you cut out the systems with stellar binary companions, and cut out systems with too low of gravity (log g < 4.0) to cut out overly evolved stars (often with too large of a radius) and cut out too cool or too hot of stars, keeping 4500 < T_effective < 6500, then there a gap of zero iron-rich system planets between periods of approximately 653 and 923 days. Here is the poster. I hope I get to present it as a poster, rather than having to chop it up into pages to put into a flip chart, but if that is what it takes to present, I'll do that. Here is the poster -- but since I see it shows too small, so in the next few days, I'll stretch it out and write about what it says in this blog, as part of the process of producing a full scientific paper on it.

These results are going to have to be presented "outside the door" on the street, because of an observatory reneging on my appointment for funny reasons -- reasons that would never happen anywhere else in astronomy, anywhere with standards. Because I was stopped from finishing the projects I started by the observatory keeping data away from me and telling no one to talk to me, I have not been able to get any new job that will give standard support for me to go to the IAU conference. So I have spent (loaned my campaign) some of the last money I have for airfare and the first few days lodging, to go and beg for the support to get in, and pay myself back for travel and living expenses.

So I am coming to the door of the IAU conference with a sign begging for some few people who love science to rather than contribute to a big science project or to a prize for a scientist who already had a good salary, to contribute to a scientist with good results but who was pushed out of science by being pushed out of his good projects, which were taken away and given to new hires by LCOGT. I of course am also pressuring LCOGT to take back its responsibility of the reneged on year appointment and the loss of having promised support to finish the research necessary for me to have gotten a new job. I am showing the grant givers (NSF, NASA, etc.), telescope lease site holders, and importantly, collaborators who could put me back into collaborations that I've been forced out of by finding ways to include me in producing our group's papers.

I've got the poster board and pens to make the signs. Please support me my sharing my campaign on social media and anywhere else it might attract attention not just from people, but from the regular media as well.

As I always say when I start comedy performances, "Hot balls of gas!" because stars are all hot balls of gas. Wish me success by sharing, sharing, sharing!

Stuart