He's friggin' appalled at the intellectual litter box NASA has become.
It's worse than an embarrassment. It's bordering on criminal.
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 12/17/2010 5:41:01 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Amid a flurry of criticism, a NASA-funded team on Thursday backed off the more extravagant, textbook-changing claims they'd made about a bacterium that had allegedly substituted arsenic for phosphorus in its DNA.
The original announcement, made at a NASA news conference Dec. 2, seemed to break a cardinal rule of biology that all organisms need some phosphorus to survive. NASA researchers claimed to have discovered an exotic organism in California's Mono Lake that lived instead on arsenic, thus broadening the types of life that may exist in the universe.
The news made headlines worldwide including a New York Times story that ran in The Inquirer on Dec. 3.
On Thursday, the researchers issued a more modest claim. Instead of saying the microbes had completely substituted arsenic for phosphorus, a new statement says the arsenic replaced "a small percentage" of the phosphorus.
A number of biologists say they'll be surprised if even this stands the test of time.
The claims "do not follow from their results," said Simon Silver, a University of Illinois microbiologist who specializes in heavy-metal resistance in bacteria. "This conclusion is not merited from what they did and measured and I think it most likely is a mistake and should never have been claimed or published."
The findings were published in the journal Science, which also issued the researchers' latest statement. Most of its 16 pages were responses to critics......
NASA reinforced this notion with an animated graphic of a DNA molecule, in which little orange balls representing phosphorus magically disappeared and were all replaced by green balls representing arsenic.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
Just proves how NASA has fallen.
As this was announced, there were rumors that NASA had discovered life on Saturn. What an overblown, badly reported work of non-science.
He's friggin' appalled at the intellectual litter box NASA has become.
It's worse than an embarrassment. It's bordering on criminal.
Given this sort of nonsense:
“In what can definitely be considered one of the odder media clips featuring a U.S. government bureaucrat, new NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told Al Jazeera that “perhaps” his “foremost” objective laid out by President Obama as NASA chief was “to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.”
And given the propagandizing conducted by folks like Hansen why does anyone expect NASA to have an interest in legitimate research? The old NASA has been co-opted for the greater good.
December 13, 2010: NASA Names Waleed Abdalati As Agency's New Chief Scientist"WASHINGTON -- NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has named Waleed Abdalati the agency's chief scientist, effective Jan. 3. Abdalati will serve as the principal adviser to the NASA administrator on agency science programs, strategic planning and the evaluation of related investments.
Abdalati is currently the director of the Earth Science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He also is an associate professor in the university's geography department. Between 1998 and 2008, Abdalati held various positions at NASA in the areas of scientific research, program management and scientific management. His research has focused on the study of polar ice cover using satellite and airborne instruments. He has led or participated in nine field and airborne campaigns in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
Abdalati will represent all of the scientific endeavors in the agency, ensuring they are aligned with and fulfill the administration's science objectives. He will advocate for NASA science in the context of those broader government science agendas and work closely with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget......"
And people wonder why we don't trust NASA when it tells us there's man-made global warming.
The only difference between this and global warming is that the luddites couldn't figure out how an arsenic-based life form would help their cause.
Abdalati will represent all of the scientific endeavors in the agency, ensuring they are aligned with and fulfill the administration’s science objectives. He will advocate for NASA science in the context of those broader government science agendas”
This sounds like a directive a Minister of Propaganda would issue. I can’t believe what’s happening to this country. NASA has now become just another tool to further the advancement of a very dangerous political agenda.
Well said, Comedian.
Ping to Jazusamo and George76: Remember this "science" story from a couple weeks back?
Theatre of the Absurd at NASA...
You pegged it.
It is going to take a hell of a lot to dig out from under this.
LOL, what would the result be of a search for intelligence inside NASA? Would it appear to be a uninhabited waste land? It seems that way....
i wanna be an scientist 2.
"Basically, it doesn't present ANY convincing evidence that arsenic has been incorporated into DNA (or any other biological molecule)," she wrote. She accused the Wolfe-Simon team of sloppy lab work and not testing whether their results were correct.
"Bottom line: I don't know whether the authors are just bad scientists or whether they're unscrupulously pushing NASA's 'There's life in outer space!' agenda," she wrote.
In an interview, she said Thursday that hers is an obscure blog and that she didn't expect the response she has gotten - with more than 100,000 visitors. She said that response was a sign of the "anger" in the community."....
I would not call it “backing off” as much as “being totally shot down by decent peer review”!!
LLS
Why would anyone be surprised at such phony-baloney “scientific” results from an institution that continues to trumpet faked global warming data and whose self-announced primary institutional mission is to make Arabs feel good about themselves because their last significant scientific advancement was the invention of the zero several hundred years ago?
Do I ever remember it. Thanks for the ping.
When discoveries in science go against everything that has been proven and accepted as fact up to that time you’d think people would be a little more careful about releasing something that will make fools out of them.
If there had been another hundred or more “scientists” that bought into this from the beginning it could have ranked on the bogus scale as number 2 after the manmade global warming farce, fortunately they didn’t.
Thanks for posting, CW.
I want a perfect pizza too.
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The claims "do not follow from their results," said Simon Silver, a University of Illinois microbiologist who specializes in heavy-metal resistance in bacteria.
You'd think that Simon Silver would be specializing in precious-metal resistance in bacteria.
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