NASA's 'Arsenic Microbe' Science Under Fire

radioweather writes "The cryptic press release NASA made last week that set the blogosphere afire with conjecture, which announced: 'NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.' may be a case of 'go fever' science pushed too quickly by press release. A scathing article in Slate.com lists some very prominent microbiologists who say the NASA-backed study is seriously flawed and that the finding may be based on something as simple as poor sample washing to remove phosphate contamination. One of the scientists, Shelley Copley of the University of Colorado said 'This paper should not have been published,' while another, John Roth of UC-Davis says: 'I suspect that NASA may be so desperate for a positive story that they didn't look for any serious advice from DNA or even microbiology people,' The experience reminded some of another press conference NASA held in 1996. Scientists unveiled a meteorite from Mars in which they said there were microscopic fossils. A number of critics condemned the report (also published in Science) for making claims it couldn't back up."

Comments

Re:Of course it's under fire

[__aagctu1952]

If a scientist other than themselves didn't make the discovery, it's obvious the other guy's methods are flawed!

Scientists can be such whiny, arrogant assholes...whatever happened to science being done for science, rather than recognition?

You do realize that criticizing research is a crucial part of the scientific method, right? Letting claims go unchallenged is the domain of religion, not science.
People are ripping apart this paper because it makes grand claims based on a potentially flawed methodology. If the results can be replicated with those flaws fixed, then the NASA team's research recieves further validation. If not, hey, I guess they jumped the gun. Either way, you have to identify the potential flaws, which is what people are doing here.

Also, to once again quote Rosie Redfield:

There's a difference between controls done to genuinely test your hypothesis and those done when you just want to show that your hypothesis is true.

Re:NASA is becoming sad...

[Sockatume]

They've assembled a space telescope, landed several autonomous rovers on Mars that have exceeded their mission profile tenfold, have a squadron of probes out in the gas giants, another heading for Pluto, a next-generation space telescope the size of a bus is currently under construction. NASA's got a lot of problems but the selectivity of your examples is comical, and your argument bewildering. It's not like the rocket guys go on holiday when the astrobiologists decide to start working on something.