How big is that doggie in the window?

Earlier this year, Icarus published Dr. Myhrvold’s first paper on how reflected sunlight affects measurements of asteroids at the shorter infrared wavelengths measured by WISE. It has now accepted and posted a second paper last month containing Dr. Myhrvold’s criticisms of the NASA asteroid data.

Among them is the case of the copied numbers.

The Neowise researchers’ model was calibrated with diameters for about a hundred asteroids that have been measured by radar, visiting spacecraft or when an asteroid passed in front of a distant star.

When the scientists reported their findings, they did not include the estimates produced by their models, which would have given a sense of how good the model is. Instead they included the earlier measurements.

Other astronomers agreed that the Neowise scientists were not clear about what numbers they were reporting.

“They did some kind of dumb things,” said Alan W. Harris, a retired NASA asteroid expert who was one of the reviewers of Dr. Myhrvold’s second paper.

Dr. Myhrvold has accused the Neowise scientists of going into a NASA archive of planetary results, changing some of the copied numbers and deleting others without giving notice.

“They went back and rewrote history,” he said. “What it shows is even this far in, they’re still lying. They haven’t come clean.”

Dr. Harris said he did not see nefarious behavior by the Neowise scientists, but agreed, “That’s still weird.”

Dr. Myhrvold also contends that Neowise set up arbitrary rules for deciding which data to keep and disregard and that they did not describe their methods in enough detail for other scientists to replicate.