* Astronomy

Wired News has removed three articles from its website after an internal investigation failed to confirm the authenticity of a source used in the stories.

"Tribal Curse Haunts Launch Pad" (June 27, 2006), "NASA Boosts Heart-Monitoring Tech" (July 7, 2006) and "Don't Flush It -- Breathe It" (July 14, 2006), all by Philip Chien, relied in part on quotes and citations from Robert Ash, described in the first two stories as a "space historian" and in the last as an "aeronautical engineer and amateur space historian."

In a phone conversation with Wired News editors, Chien had identified Ash as a professor of aeronautical engineering at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Reached by phone this week, Ash said he is not a space historian and has never participated in interviews with Chien. Ash is an aeronautical engineering professor at the university and has been involved in numerous NASA projects.
Chien is a freelance space reporter who has worked for online, print and television news outlets, and recently authored a book on the Columbia space shuttle disaster. He's written seven stories for Wired News, two of them in 2004, the other five in the past few weeks.
Chien's reporting came under scrutiny when he submitted a draft article citing a different source, Ted Collins, along with contact information for Collins, as required by Wired News ever since questions arose last year over another reporter's sources.

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