Debunking an Urban Legend of Asteroidal Proportions - Philip Metzger

Planetary scientist and physicist Philip Metzger has written a very informative blog entry debunking misconceptions about the alleged past demotion of asteroids from planets to non-planets. Below is the link to his entry, which summarizes a paper he cowrote with fellow planetary scientists Mark Sykes, Alan Stern, and Kirby Runyon for publication in a science journal and for a public presentation, "Planetary Taxonomy: The Geophysical Planet Definition," which will be presented tomorrow, Sunday, March 18, 2018, at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference 2018.

Debunking an Urban Legend of Asteroidal Proportions - Philip Metzger:

A pre-print of the whole journal article is available for download here: 

http://www.philipmetzger.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Preprint_Asteroids-reclassified-as-non-planets_Metzger-et-al.pdf

Just how unscientific has the IAU been about planet definition over the years? Metzger tells this shocking story:

"I mentioned above about authorities 'imposing decisions on individual scientists.' Does that really happen? Well, the IAU tried to make it happen. A colleague who is on the editorial board of one of the major planetary science journals told me that the IAU wrote to the editors and asked them to deny publication to any manuscript that doesn’t bend the knee to accept the IAU’s definitions. My colleague says the editors decided to reject the request. Thankfully so! Scientific freedom lives to fight another day."