Pierre-Marie Luc Robitaille is a radiologist, formerly Director of Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research for the Department of Medicine of Ohio State University from 1989-2000. In 2000 he was asked to step down when he began to espouse ideas that were "outside his realm of expertise", specifically related to non-mainstream beliefs in the area of astronomy. None of his ideas have been accepted by any mainstream reputable publication. In 2002 Robitaille and his wife paid for a full page ad in the Sunday New York Times, in which he claimed that satellite measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation, believed by most astronomers to be an afterglow of the Big Bang, are actually observations of a glow from Earth's oceans. Mainstream astronomers reviewed and dismissed Robitaille's claims as "not tenable" and "completely wrong". The incident raised questions about the New York Times' policy for printing paid advertisments without checking them for scientific validity. The Times ad cost nearly a year of Robitaille's salary. When asked why he didn't just put it on the standard preprint archive, he replied that he didn't know it existed.
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