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:Scientific press releases

[nucal]

This is an abstract of a poster that Dr. Stoker is presenting Search for Spectral Signatures of Life at the Pathfinder Landing Site at the Astrobiology Conference next week - presumably sent in a while ago.

The Superpan, an image product from the Pathfinder lander camera, is a multispectral panorama of the Pathfinder landing site acquired in 15 wavelengths in the spectral range 440 - 1100 nm. We have performed an automated search of the Superpan image cubes for the spectral signature associated with chlorophyll. First, images were calibrated to radiance values and then the multispectral images were co-registered to subpixel accuracy. An automated pixel-to-pixel search was performed on a 3-filter set of images (530 nm, 670 nm, 980 nm) to identify pixels where the following condition was met: 530 nm > 670 nm, and 980nm > 670 nm. Thus, we searched for the spectral signature associated with red light absorption by chlorophyll. When this case was met by the search routine, we plotted a full spectrum for the involved pixels and carefully examined the images. The condition was met for small areas in six image cases. All of these cases occur in near field images, where resolution is highest. Four of the cases occur on the spacecraft and appear to be associated with spacecraft structure. Two intriguing cases occur in small areas on the ground near the spacecraft.

So it was an abstract, not a press release. And partially cmpleted studis are certainly fair game for a scientific meeting. But, if it is not ready for publicaton in a scientific journal, than why is it ready for the popular press? Obviously Dr. Stoker's call ... granted, getting BBC-caliber press is tough to turn down.

You forgot lawyers...

[swillden]

... but maybe you were just oversimplifying, since lawyers are larval politicians.

Piss-poor science....

[Doctor Fishboy]

I'd be extremely interested to see their 'spectra' of the chlorophyll patches. I've worked with broadband astronomical imaging for a few years, and even straight forward accurate photometry can be fraught with subtle systematic effects due to the nature of the camera and the filters. My money is on scattered light from a combination of the sun-camera-rock position causing the measured colours to go skew, or an inorganic mineral with a similiar response curve to chlorophyll.

Of course, I can't go and look at the paper for myself because there is no refereed and accepted paper - releasing it as a press release when the work hasn't been peer-reviewed is just fucking stupid.

Sloppy. Damn sloppy.

Dr Fish

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.