[vsnet-chat 4263] Re: vsnet chat topics

[Taichi Kato <tkato>]

Re: [vsnet-chat 4257] Re: vsnet chat topics

Lew Cook wrote:

> Dr. Kato has an excellent point: report all observations. Might I
> respectfully point out that much of our present controversy might
> have been avoided it we ALL reported ALL our observations, including
> negative and uncertain ones, in a prompt and timely fashion, denoting
> observations we are unsure of with a mark (: or ?) and perhaps with
> an accompanying definitive observation such as 
> 
> UR LUP 13.0? 
> UR LUP <12.6 
>
> [...]

    A potential problem arises in the present case of "possible outburst
of QW Ser" suggested (privately) by Patrick Schmeer.  If there is no
additional observation, should he register his possible postive observation,
or should he withdraw it because there is no confirmation?  Though I suppose
the latter approach might be more frequently taken, this could introduce
additional bias.  My preference is the first approach, to report all
observations as they were preceived.  Some possible positive sightings
may turn out to be spurious, and other negative observations may turn
out to be simple chance non-detection of true outbursts, but are
statistically less biased than those observations suffering from retrograde
selections.

Regards,
Taichi Kato

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