Little Green Plants on Mars?

moorhens writes "The BBC is reporting the first evidence for chlorophyll on Mars. Without chlorophyll, plants' green pigment, and photosynthesis, life on Earth would be limited to deep ocean volcanic vents and politicians."

Comments

Scientific press releases

[nucal]

Given the controversial nature of their findings and the early stage of the research, the scientists want to hold back any claims about what they may have found until they have done more work and prepared a detailed paper for submission in a scientific journal.

But they are happy to use a non-peer reviewed press release to publicize their findings. The potential of plant life on Mars is amazing, but the way this news was released is pretty irresponsible.

Re:Scientific press releases

[DeadVulcan]

But they are happy to use a non-peer reviewed press release to publicize their findings. [...] the way this news was released is pretty irresponsible.

I have to say, I'm a little tired of hearing the same kind of comments over and over, bemoaning irresponsibility and "bad science."

I can't find any evidence that these people prepared a press release (if you can show me one, then I might agree with your position). A "press release," remember, is written up and handed to the press. If a journalist comes knocking and you answer some questions, that's not a press release. It seems to me likely that the latter is what happened here.

And if an eager journalist does come knocking, I would prefer to talk to them myself, rather than leaving them to get their information from people who might not know what they're talking about. Nor do I think it's a really good idea to be doing scientific work in secrecy (yes, even secrecy from journalists). I, personally, would want to be able to impress on them what's certain and what's not. If they ignore me, then they are the ones being irresponsible, not me.

Now, the whole cold fusion story was poorly handled precisely because the scientists didn't merely talk to the press, they themselves took it to the press before they took it to a peer-reviewed journal. There's a very, very big difference, IMHO.

This BBC article wasn't even that poorly written, either. There was a bit of poor word choice ("two areas close to Pathfinder [...] have the spectral signature of chlorophyll." - I think "a spectral signature consistent with that of chlorophyll" would have been more accurate); but it wasn't all that bad, I think.

Re:Hey, what a groovy color, that looks just like.

[SIGFPE]

Looking for a particular spectral signature probably just means looking for pixels with RGB in a certain domain. Maybe they have some other channels too: IR and UV from detectors alongside the camera (that might explain the 'image registration' issues), so they're looking at multispectral images. Either way: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and pixels of a particular colour are barely even interesting - let alone extraordinary. Sounds like yet another scam to get funding to me.

Re:Last time I checked....

[Midnight Thunder]

Since we don't have a real sample of the plant life form, if there it is indeed there, we can't say how it differs to what we find on Earth. Since there are bacteria that can withstand amazing amounts of radiation, and others that can withstand other extreme conditions, what is there to say that no plants have cells adapted to this sort of environment. Heck, what even says that the source of the chlorophyll signature are plants, it could just as well be from bacteria that uses cholophyll for its soucrce of energy.