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 NASAs 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 Universitys 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 microbes 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 chunkspresumably 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 students critique.
But how could the bacteria be using phosphate when they werent 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. Its 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 isnt being incorporated at all; its 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. Its 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? Cmon C-SPAN testimony on freaky deaky microbes would be riveting television.
I'm always skeptical of any new developments until I can,
a) examine the data,
b) critique the process,
c)replicate results(or not),
draw conclusions based on experimentation.
THEN, and only then should there be criticism, not 'shoot-from-the-lip' commentaries made to promote blog hits.
I will wait until the experts in this field have the time to examine, experiment, resolve issues, and verify or not any repeatability or deficiency in the NASA claim.
If false, I'll be the first to burn them at the stake, but if proven true, then a lot of crow meals are going to be served.
Hey, I wear LONG sleeved, thank you very much.
Thanking you and your Screaming Eagle again, SE Mom. As all here, on this forum are aware, America needs more Screaming Eagles and people with the Right Stuff.
Michelle Obama was going to add arsenic to the CRACKa food pyramid;) FIXED THAT!
An excellent comment. Reconstructive surgery would help to redefine NASA's, once upon a time, mission, before too many politicians took over.
Science at work.
NASA “science” is devoted to faking the data, from Global Warming complete fraud to phony arsenic based life forms.
I am too close to NASA engineering without being in it to be able to defend NASA in any quadrant. I assume, based on the NASA global climate science, that NASA science is about the same as NASA engineering.
Your analysis is, of course, quite reasoned and damps my tendency to see this thing through my NASA colored lenses.
The rest of your post is as imaginative as it is entertaining. :) Gave me a chuckle.
The NappyOne
Robert Klein did a great bit about this, which I paraphrase thusly:
"
We idolize rock stars and baseball players, and then we ignore the true heroes, like the Jonas Salks that give us life-saving cures.
They slave away all their lives over microscopes and they can't even get laid!
You ever heard of a scientist groupie?
(Imitating a teeny-booper:) Ooooh, baby, I love that hairline and that pocket protector and those little horn-rimmed glasses! Come here baby, I want you!!
"
You and Robert Klein are on the same page, I think. See my post #49.
I guess that is what we call Islamic Science. Disregard the facts and go with your feelings.
Lake Maxincuckee, which most people have never heard of, has only 221 references. Yet, it has FRESH WATER ~ probably as much as the people of the City of Los Angeles drink in a year.
Then there's Churubusco, another place almost no one has heard of. It has 4,200,000 references on the net ~ and that's MOSTLY related to a battle undertaken in the Mexican-American War.
Cherubusco Indiana ~ a very tiny town ~ has about 42,000 references. It is near a lake that is exceptionally deep and contains a giant snapping turtle that can slash steel netting to pieces. This thing has come out of the lake from time to time and eaten herds of cattle.
It don't need no stinkin' arsenic!
Hmmm... “Crap-based life” has a better ring to it and really does describe many folks at NASA and in Gov’t!
Okay,take the dino story. How does one get a grant to find out more without some sort of exposure? Nobody gets a grant sitting in a lab and not publishing. A scientist working for a corporation on the other hand will be paid while not publishing.
It’s not NASA’s fault:
http://home.slac.stanford.edu/pressreleases/2010/20101202.htm
(Challanger belongs to Morton Thiokol)
First a more Muslim friendly NASA.... Now a more alien friendly NASA....
Criticizing these microbes is racial discrimination!!! sarc
NASA unofficial motto,
“punching holes in the ozone layer to find out why the ozone layer is shrinking”
When I considered what NASA was saying, I was extremely skeptical, and wanted to see some good, hard science to support it.
Sounds like their claims are falling apart.
But there is another angle about this whole thing. Seems to me that they come out fairly regular-like lately with an announcement like “Wow!!! We found a planet just like Earth” or “Wow!!! Several of Jupiters moons could support life”
I think we’re being prepped for something... some kind of actual disclosure...
The sooner we shut down this massive legacy of LBJ’s corruption, the sooner real space exploration gets strengthened.
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