ハーバード・スミソニアン天体物理学センター
A few scholars, such as Robert Gurval of UCLA and Brian G. Marsden of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, leave the comet's very existence as an open question. Marsden notes in his foreword to Ramsey and Licht's book, "Given the circumstance of a single reporter two decades after the event, I should be remiss if I were not to consider this [i.e., the comet's non-existence] as a serious possibility."