[vsnet-alert 11303] Re constant stars

[redvars at fastmail.co.uk]

In fact, perusal of http://var.astro.cz/oejv/issues/oejv0035.pdf shows
that ejaavso 96 at
http://www.aavso.org/publications/ejaavso/ej96.shtml is textually pretty
much a reworking of oejv 35 in quite a few places, thus it is even more
peculiar that ejaavso 96 doesn't reference the first paper from that
NSVS effort.  Well, accept that oejv 35 acknowledges something not
acknowledged in ejaavso 96.

Memory ain't what it was re time of occurrences but sometime about
eighteen month to two year ago I emailed Arne and a bunch of AAVSO VSX
moderators to note that I'd checked a sample of 40 of Nicholson's L:
objects in AAVSO VSX and about ten percent were indistinguishable from
constant within the context of the at times noisy NSVS data, and when it
comes to telling between noise and erratic low amplitude red irregular
variables just sticking L: on the end and hoping wasn't very useful,
there're enough suspect variables around that are constant as is.

I primarily noted it to them coz I said to Arne he'd best likely check
them all himself if AAVSO decided to publish the new variables that were
uniquely submitted to AAVSO VSX inhouse, coz they'd look daft if a
sizeable proportion weren't variable.  I also asked Nicholson when he
used to gripe that aavso wouldn't publish them for him as to why he
didn't publish them himself.  I'm pretty sure I noted I'd be looking for
the at least acknowledgement of "his" methodology.

So I remember I made them aware.

Of course, I'll be wrong, coz Nicholson runs an entire blog called
"wrong-again-john" listing all the times I'm apparently always wrong and
noting that I don't help the astro community (he neatly forgetting that
what I've said on public lists is not necessarily a reflection of what
assists I gave in private which I don't go around bragging about on
blogs like some).  I'm so wrong he was never able to adequately or
successfully and least of all massively find red variables in NSVS data
until he saw my aavso discussion mail, I'm so wrong he didn't find any
common proper motion pairs until he saw my MNRAS paper (which he refers
to, ironically, in his few subsequent attempts at cpm work, despite him
having written the MNRAS editors at a later date to tell them the paper
was wrong as he said I got all my numbers (but it was actually coz he
failed to use VizieR properly and my numbers weren't wrong), ie as usual
damning the very paper he used as support for his own cpm work, and his
latest batch of publishing successes are his ogle ii galactic disc
papers, following on from ones I did showing the existence of the
resource, a long standing resource he's never found time to use afore
then.

Now, there's at least one, probably several other, far better guys
who've submitted nsvs and ogle ii variables to AAVSO VSX, done a better
job, nicer analyses, which in the former case includes merging L or SR
style lightcurves from NSVS with sparse ASAS3 data and showing them
Miras and even getting a period.  Now that's real work.  But will that
guy publish?  Nope, he just submits to AAVSO VSX.  Pity.  Whilst the
pseudoscientist self aggrandiser will spout off all over the place,
especially blogs, about his new ejaavso and it being peer reviewed and
all.  Just like he used to brag that he'd found over a thousand new red
variables because they'd been peer reviewed and accepted at AAVSO VSX.

I've an immmense amount of respect for Patrick, but one man stuck doing
95%+ of the AAVSO VSX moderating on a purely voluntary basis with to my
limited knowledge no formal astronomic qualification (I could be wrong
on that) ain't peer review.  Having said that, if I was asked who I'd
want amongst amateurs to moderate such a list it'd be the two that do it
all, Patrick and Sebastian.  But Nicholson's web pages always declared
these 1000+ new variables in AAVSO VSX as being peer reviewed, even if
they've had him reword it in his paper.

Cheers

John

PS that'll do it, I've covered all elements of the promise now, back to
your regularly scheduled renamed CV discoveries with superhumps alert
list...  ...oh, yeah, "monsoons".  You might've to wait a coupla months.

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