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Arsenic-Friendly Microbe Now Seems Unlikely

Posted by timothy on from the but-it-sure-sounded-cool-at-the-time dept.

The Associated Press (as carried by the Washington Post) reports that the controversial report of arsenic-based life-forms in a California lake (much hyped by NASA) look suddenly less controversial, but in a way that will disappoint those who hoped that such an unexpected thing had actually been found on earth. Instead, the journal Science "released two papers that rip apart the original research. They 'clearly show' that the bacteria can't use arsenic as the researchers claimed, said an accompanying statement from the journal." USA Today's version of the story points out that the claim, and subsequent considered rejection of that claim as unsupportable, "looks like a case study in how science corrects its mistakes."

10 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Oh well... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's nice to see that the matter was cleared up relatively quickly(the media circus wasn't pretty; but it could have been worse).

    On the minus side, arsenic-crazed bacteria are a rather cool theory to have dashed against the rocks of callous empiricism. Hopefully some sort of selective breeding experiment can succeed where nature has failed, and give us an organism that substitutes some or all of its phosphorus for arsenic...

    1. Re:Oh well... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Funny

      Personally, I'd like to see some experiments attempting to create an arsenic-based politician. Of course, I realize that there would likely be many, many failures on the road to succes, but such is science.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  2. Re:A sad day for hot scientists by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's her picture, if anyone cares. You shouldn't.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Re:A sad day for hot scientists by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I realize this is the internet, and we slashdotters have a reputation to maintain, but seriously... ask yourself if you're proud of that statement. It's a scientist who happens to be female, and your first thought that you share with the world is on her looks?

  4. OH a correction.... by CheshireDragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That is the one thing great about science. Science admits its wrongs...

    Religion simply can not do that because GOD IS NEVER WRONG...grrrrr blarggggg ahhhhhhh

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    "That's right...I said it."
  5. Great job from commercial publishers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The original study was published in Science, one of the most prestigious journals with high rejection rate. Just another proof highly selective journals by commercial publishers don't decide to publish based on technical correctness but on trendiness. Sensationalistic papers are accepted even if they are technically incorrect, technically correct but non trendy ones are rejected because they're too boring. This is the biggest problem with commercial scientific publishing, they have no incentive to publish correct science, only incentives to publish science that get them in the newpapers.

    1. Re:Great job from commercial publishers by starless · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The original study was published in Science, one of the most prestigious journals with high rejection rate. Just another proof highly selective journals by commercial publishers don't decide to publish based on technical correctness but on trendiness. Sensationalistic papers are accepted even if they are technically incorrect, technically correct but non trendy ones are rejected because they're too boring. This is the biggest problem with commercial scientific publishing, they have no incentive to publish correct science, only incentives to publish science that get them in the newpapers.

      I think that you're way overstating this. Although Science (and Nature) definitely want to publish high-impact science, and there's usually a need to do things very quickly, which increases the chance of error, papers are heavily refereed. The paper would have been sent to 3 referees, and to have the paper published, at least 2 of them would typically have had to agree to publication. In addition, "interesting" papers have a higher chance of being wrong that a run-of-the-mill paper appearing in some other journal which has no surprising results.

  6. Re:21st Century Science... by BergZ · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think it is worth while to point out that, of the 5 independent investigations that were launched as a result of the so-called "Climategate", all 5 have exonerated the Climatologists under investigation. None of the 5 were able to find any evidence of scientific malpractice. I'd call that, coupled with the endorsement of the G8 (+5) national academies of science, a pretty unequivocal vindication of the science of Global Climate Change.

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  7. Re:Why aren't we redistributing Bill Gate's Money? by SlashV · · Score: 4, Informative

    Right now, all we have the shuttle

    No, you don't

  8. Re:More incomplete research by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've checked both papers (in fact have both of them opened right now...). Both papers show that the bacteria does not incorporate arsenic into DNA what so ever. It is sad that two research groups had to 'waste' their time proving what everyone already knew. I really mean _knew_ not assume. There were so many flaws in the original paper that it should have been shot down by the reviewers... but wasn't.