The researchers believed that this was another 'soldier's bike' and another convenient excuse for the invaders.

Spanish sailors talked for a long time about the nightmarish 'skull towers' that the Native Americans built, replenishing the ossuary after each ritual.įor a long time, the stories of the Spanish conquistadors about the 'towers of skulls' were perceived by modern historians with a great deal of skepticism. Most of all the horror, awe and disgust among the invaders were caused by the numerous human sacrifices that the Aztecs made. In the end, the primary responsibility to be honest falls on us.When the Spanish conquered central America they were shocked by the 'brutal' traditions local residents. We cannot stop the media writing exaggerated headlines, but we can be precise and unambiguous in the terminology and in the meaning of the metrics we use as researchers and publishers. ) that could engender a sense of fatigue in the public and, in the long term, damage the credibility of our community. There is a risk of saturation of flashy announcements (yet another most similar planet to Earth, yet another discovery of water on Mars. Both Comments warn against the danger of inaccurate communication between the scientific world and the public. Nevertheless, it is very easy to convey a misleading message concerning newly published research, maybe motivated by showing that public money is well spent, with the media always looking for catchy headlines. In this period of relative distrust of the general public towards science, astronomy still enjoys a degree of attention and respect, as the Rosetta and New Horizons missions, for example, have demonstrated. underlines, we have to be adamantly clear on what we know, what we can know, and what we don't know, especially if we want to quantify the vague notion of habitability through the use of metrics, even if it means adopting a more conservative way of expressing results.įinally, there is an additional Tower of Babel that must be considered: communication with the outside world. The desire to find a second Earth can lead to rushed, inaccurate or downright deceitful interpretations of research. This uncertainty is magnified for rocky exoplanets, whose environments are still largely beyond our observing capabilities.

Habitability is a slippery concept whose boundaries are continuously being revised even within our own Earth, as the constant flow of discoveries of extremophiles demonstrates. This is especially dangerous when we deal with habitability. Expressions like super-Earth (or super-Venus), mini-Neptune or hot Jupiter possess a specific and often misleading flavour, at least because they imply that we have a much more extensive knowledge of these bodies than we actually do. point out, some words are not neutral, but rather come with baggage that leads to misinterpretation.

Tower of babel discovered