Here’s something interesting one of my coworkers pointed out to me this morning:

Yesterday, the AFP reported on how a 13-year-old German kid rechecked NASA’s figures and decided that, while NASA put the chances of the Apophis asteroid colliding with Earth at 1 in 45,000, in fact the probability was more like 1 in 450. From the AFP:

“Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported.

NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.”

Anyway, it turned out to be flat out wrong, as the AFP reported later:

NASA, “sounding a bit like a weary math teacher, said its figures are correct when it comes to the asteroid Apophis, not the boy’s.”

In fact, the agency “had no doubts about their calculations,” according to NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown.

However, what’s missing from this second story is any mention of the AFP’s previous coverage, or any admissions that they got it wrong (and pretty much botched a whole article in the process).

More importantly, how did they figure in the first article that NASA “told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right?” A stark contrast to the headline of the followup: “German whizzkid got it wrong.”

And these are straight from the wires, I don’t think Yahoo or Google edit their wire articles at all before putting them online.

In any case, NASA has some pretty great quotes in reaction to the news that a schoolkid schooled them, but none better than this in the New Scientist from NASA scientist Steven Chesley: “The idea that we’ve somehow been corrected is absolutely untrue.”

Show that German kid who’s boss, NASA.