Posted on 12/08/2010 4:54:14 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
I gave it the front-page treatment when the big announcement was made, so now the big skeptical response gets front-page treatment too. Simply devastating — so much so that I wonder why it fell to an outfit like Slate to put it together. Did the Times or WaPo not have enough of an inkling about NASA’s discovery to survey naysayers before writing up their reports on the “discovery”? This information would have come in a lot handier when everyone was still paying attention to this story.
As soon Redfield started to read the paper, she was shocked. “I was outraged at how bad the science was,” she told me.
Redfield blogged a scathing attack on Saturday. Over the weekend, a few other scientists took to the Internet as well. Was this merely a case of a few isolated cranks? To find out, I reached out to a dozen experts on Monday. Almost unanimously, they think the NASA scientists have failed to make their case. “It would be really cool if such a bug existed,” said San Diego State University’s Forest Rohwer, a microbiologist who looks for new species of bacteria and viruses in coral reefs. But, he added, “none of the arguments are very convincing on their own.” That was about as positive as the critics could get. “This paper should not have been published,” said Shelley Copley of the University of Colorado…
In fact, says Harvard microbiologist Alex Bradley, the NASA scientists unknowingly demonstrated the flaws in their own experiment. They immersed the DNA in water as they analyzed it, he points out. Arsenic compounds fall apart quickly in water, so if it really was in the microbe’s genes, it should have broken into fragments, Bradley wrote Sunday in a guest post on the blog We, Beasties. But the DNA remained in large chunks—presumably because it was made of durable phosphate. Bradley got his Ph.D. under MIT professor Roger Summons, a professor at MIT who co-authored the 2007 weird-life report. Summons backs his former student’s critique.
But how could the bacteria be using phosphate when they weren’t getting any in the lab? That was the point of the experiment, after all. It turns out the NASA scientists were feeding the bacteria salts which they freely admit were contaminated with a tiny amount of phosphate. It’s possible, the critics argue, that the bacteria eked out a living on that scarce supply. As Bradley notes, the Sargasso Sea supports plenty of microbes while containing 300 times less phosphate than was present in the lab cultures.
The authors of the study declined to address the criticisms when contacted by Slate, but even a dummy like me wondered whether the bacteria might simply have been surviving like camels on tiny amounts of phosphorus instead of incorporating arsenic into its DNA. The theory proposed by at least one skeptic, in fact, is that the arsenic isn’t being incorporated at all; it’s simply adhering to the phosphorus that forms the framework of the DNA double-helix like gum on the bottom of a shoe.
Follow the link and read the whole thing. It’s essential if you tracked the story last week when it first broke. Exit question one via Greg Pollowitz: Did NASA have any financial motive in hyping this discovery? Exit question two: Should the GOP hold hearings if the study falls apart? C’mon — C-SPAN testimony on freaky deaky microbes would be riveting television.
NASA budget time?
NASA again ...
Time for some serious hearings....including that Hansen guy that fudges data.....
That’s too bad - just when Michelle Obama was going to add arsenic to the food pyramid;)
LOL!
Scientists: NASA’s alleged discovery of arsenic-based life is crap
As soon Redfield started to read the paper, she was shocked. “I was outraged at how bad the science was,” she told me.
Well I'll be darned. Jan Hendrik Schön strikes again.
On the upside, at least this time the scam was discovered pqd. I guess, 'maybe', that Schön did teach some scientists a lesson after all.
Darn, I was just getting my “Save the Arsenic Bug” scam set up. I missed the whole “Global Warming” scam, but I figured NASA might get some mileage out of this one too. Where’s Al Baby when you need him??
NURSE! More caffeine, STAT!
Really.
I mean who doesn't want to see Maxine Waters debate the finer points of molecular biology?
That's science, not an online blog war.
Interesting!
I am sure any number of criticisms could be tossed at this particular project but so far the only ones we see on this thread are unsubstantiated opinions.
Doesn't mean NASA proved anything, but nobody else proved anything either.
My immediate thought was that this could be part of a long term program to return Mono Lake to its original state ~ whatever that was. Right now it's simply a salt lake. Before Los Angeles tapped into its sources in the surrounding mountains it was brackish at worst.
If that were the objective, it failed. At the moment what we have is an ENDANGERED SPECIES and it'll have to be protected by leaving Mono Lake at it's saltiest worst.
You'd think Conservatives would immediately see the marvelous spectacle of the EPA now having to protect something it has worked years to destroy!
Then we have the EVOs who would see in this the opportunity to have a species in hand that has OBSERVABLY EVOLVED. Flipping a base pair is one thing. Replacing its chemistry is quite another ~ actually gives you an entirely new form of life.
The next step for the EVOs is to FIND SOME MORE OF THIS SOMEWHERE ELSE ~ and, if you read the NASA report carefully they are getting set to do that at another delightful vacation spot out in the wilderness.
The CREOs ought to also get in on this. A new form of life is right up their alley. Obviously God can create life more than once, right? And here it is ~ an alternative chemistry that can live in salt brine with mine-able levels of arsenic. Doesn't that put to the torch the idea that ALL LIFE on earth is derived from but a single cell that created itself one time?
Well, anyway, maybe the EVOs and CREOs will hop on this like a bunny rabbit on clover ~ or maybe not. I think it's great. Finally an environmental issue BOTH SIDES can use on each other, and a debate on the efficacy and utility of evolution ~ if it really exists after all.
I see blood in the water on this one.
This is easy to explain.
NASA has laid off all real scientists in order to hire ill educated sleazy imams to teach Islam to all the remaining admin types.
Besides, being a scientist for a liberal regime is a contradiction in terms.
I’ve been ahead of you since 3 December....I posted this...my comment was meant as a huge sarc toward the bacteria theory crap:
“Arsenic-munching germ redefines ‘life as we know it’”
And my response was: “Somehow global warming is tied in with this.”
Viernes, 03 de Diciembre de 2010 09:24:27 a.m. • 23 of 33
Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)
It must be hard to be a scientist. Long hours over a microscope. Days of calculations with strange formulas. Little pay. No recognition. There is always a temptation to see a breakthrough discovery where there is really none.
Wait a second - I thought NASA was supposed to be focusing on its prime mission: holding hands with Mohammedans so that they feel better about themselves.
What the heck are they doing supporting bad science?
Or, vice versa. I see this as a good way to put an end to the dispute over the uses of the Mono Lake area.
Of course, this point is often raised when people are skeptical of evolution. I recall one article a few years ago in which a few footprints of a previously unknown dinosaur were discovered. Based on less than ten footprints, the scientists declared the height of the animal, the diet of the animal, it's ability to swim as well as to walk, the age in which it lived, and where it fit on a complex evolutionary tree.
Solid? Repeatable? Empirical data? It was all guesswork.
Science used to mean something.
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