Yes, but they quoted both Steve Vogt and Mike Brown, who have devoted most of their careers to planet-finding. And both of them said that our solar system seems unusual. Since they are well aware of the biased sample issue, I would bet there is more to it than this.
For instance, maybe they are able to model the effect of the bias, at least for some range of planetary masses, and the bias is not enough to explain the frequency-vs-mass curve they are getting. Or maybe their use of multiple techniques allows them to characterize the bias.
This excerpt from their recent paper on an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone of a nearby M-class star gives an indication of where they're going with this work:
"Using the relations given by Charbonneau et al. (2007), the reported candidates have non-negligible probabilities of transiting in front of the star (∼2.7%, 1.1%, and 0.6% for planets b, c, and d, respectively). [...] With the new generation of optical and infrared spectrographs, many nearby M dwarfs will be efficiently surveyed for low mass planets. If the detection rate holds, very soon now we may have a real chance of searching for spectroscopic signatures of water and life on one of these worlds."
In other words, detect a bunch of candidates, watch for transits, and use spectroscopic information to detect water.
That's a great video, and obviously she is very qualified to speak to this subject. I don't see how this shows that the GP comment is "right" in its assertion that this is just an effect of biased sampling.
I only had time to look at the first few minutes, but around 6:50 she does say that our solar system is "not that common", which she quantifies as "it could only be as much as 10-20% of star systems". Maybe that means <= 10-20%?
So, this does not seem to contradict anything Vogt and Brown were quoted as saying.
Incidentally, I wasn't going by the statement in the NPR article, but also by the press release from UCSC (http://news.ucsc.edu/2012/12/tau-ceti.html), Vogt's home institution. I don't think that quote is subject to journalistic mangling.
I agreed with tocomment that it was a biased sampling not in the sense that planetary systems happen to be this way in the region we are looking at, but in the sense that planetary systems seem to be this way when we look at things from THIS set of instrumentation and methodology.
IOW, I disagree with NPR's claim that "Our Very Normal Solar System Isn't Normal Anymore". Addendum: It may indeed be abnormal. But we don't have data to conclude that yet, or even to suspect it.
Unusual is a subjective term. She says 10%-20% of the planetary systems are like ours. Are you saying that that was the point made in the original article too?
"Unusual is a subjective term" -- absolutely. I don't want to go back and forth on this one either.
Listen carefully to the video. She says "It could only be as common as 10-20%". Just before saying that, she pauses and looks upward, to formulate the sentence correctly. The 10-20% number is an upper bound, not a direct estimate.
You have to give her credit for communicating the idea carefully. The difficulty of doing this in real time is extreme. And if you do it wrong, you really get taken to task by your colleagues.
I don't know if it was, but I'm not concerned. What I took away from the original article was: We have a theory for how solar systems form. That theory assumes that our solar system is typical. The data we're finding does not agree with our theory, because the data indicates that our solar system is not typical.
For instance, maybe they are able to model the effect of the bias, at least for some range of planetary masses, and the bias is not enough to explain the frequency-vs-mass curve they are getting. Or maybe their use of multiple techniques allows them to characterize the bias.
This excerpt from their recent paper on an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone of a nearby M-class star gives an indication of where they're going with this work:
"Using the relations given by Charbonneau et al. (2007), the reported candidates have non-negligible probabilities of transiting in front of the star (∼2.7%, 1.1%, and 0.6% for planets b, c, and d, respectively). [...] With the new generation of optical and infrared spectrographs, many nearby M dwarfs will be efficiently surveyed for low mass planets. If the detection rate holds, very soon now we may have a real chance of searching for spectroscopic signatures of water and life on one of these worlds."
In other words, detect a bunch of candidates, watch for transits, and use spectroscopic information to detect water.