'55 Science Paper Retracted to Thwart Creationists

i_like_spam writes "The New York Times has up a story about a paper published in 1955 by Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College. The paper, entitled 'Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life', speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, 'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.' Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, but today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want — from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention. So after 52 years, he has retracted the paper. 'Dr. Jacobson's retraction is in "the noblest tradition of science," Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist, wrote in its November-December issue, which has Dr. Jacobson's letter. His letter shows, Ms. Reid wrote, "the distinction between a scientist who cannot let error stand, no matter the embarrassment of public correction," and people who "cling to dogma."'"

i'm confused on the timeline

[User 956]

he paper, entitled 'Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life', speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, 'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive ... creationists cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention.

Wait, so is the earth billions of years old, or 6000 years old, as told in the bible?

Re:Likely result

[vought]

The amount of confirmation bias that people can exhibit when their passions are challenged is incredible.


I can think of about 25% of the U.S. population who prove your statement incontrovertibly true.

Re:Likely result

[east coast]

The amount of confirmation bias that people can exhibit when their passions are challenged is incredible.

Are you talking about the "humans caused global warming" crowd?

Fantastic!

[COMON$]

So now as a creationist all I need to do is take my least favorite scientific postings, twist their words to say what I want them to and viola they get retracted and denounced! Wow, why didn't I think of this before?

Re:i'm confused on the timeline

[RedACE7500]

It's somewhere near the back.

Re:Likely result

[Daimanta]

[quote]The amount of confirmation bias that people can exhibit when their passions are challenged is incredible.[/quote]

This, ofcourse, only applies when your opponent is involved. You, on the other hand, are never wrong. You never have a fault in your logic and you do not suffer from even the most common logical imperfections. You are perfect.

Re:Fantastic!

[whoever57]

So now as a creationist all I need to do is take my least favorite scientific postings, twist their words to say what I want them to and viola they get retracted and denounced! Wow, why didn't I think of this before?

What you are missing is that the original author of the paper acknowledged significant errors in it. Also, where did the music ("viola") come from? I didn't see any reference to music in the original story.

i would like to make a retraction

[circletimessquare]

in 1998 i made an inflammatory post on slashdot in a discussion thread about the merits or lack thereof of windows 98. people have used that post to claim that i am a troll. i am not a troll, i am in fact a lurker. by retracting that post i am able to assert that

thank you for your attention

Re:some more preaching to the choir

[halivar]

Which one has the coolest pictures?

Re:Likely result

[Nimey]

Funny, I thought Bush had a 30% approval rating.

Re:Futile Effort

[Chr0me]

'waffler' and 'flip-flopper', two terms I have no idea why they even exist.

I think they're archaic for "one who makes waffles" and "one who wears shoes such as thongs and geta," like cobbler and haberdasher. Normally we would now say Waffle House employee and beach-goer, samurai, or hippie.

Re:Likely result

[LithiumX]

I take great offense to this post, and will elaborate on exactly why.

You propose that the poster you quoted is never wrong. We'll take this statement as Truth B. Truth A similarly states that it is I who am never wrong.

Truth A and Truth B, under normal conditions, can coexist. However, if you run this pair through enough permutations, you will eventually include an instance that pits myself against him. In such a case, the two statements are mutually exclusive.

Since A is a constant, and B is hypothetical in nature, then the result is obvious to anyone with a clear head. Truth A logically overules Truth B, rendering B less than factual.

Thank you for your time.

Re:People retract stuff all the time... so what!

[drxenos]

That God didn't play dice with the universe! (Sorry, couldn't help myself.)

Re:Likely result

[bendodge]

Are you sure that isn't just your bias?

Re:Fantastic!

[Nexx]

. Also, where did the music ("viola") come from? I didn't see any reference to music in the original story.

Creationism begat churches, and churches begat music. Duh :)

Re:Creating something from nothing

[happyemoticon]

Hmm. I think the real question is this: If I put Richard Dawkins and Ann Coulter in a room together, will they annihilate each other? Even if I can't harvest the result as energy, man, sounds like a win/win situation to me!

Re:Ironic curiosity

[IthnkImParanoid]

Terse, unsupported assertions are the enemy of cheese.

Re:Trite two's top us

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother. I've run the down syndrome decrypter, and it just turns out to be a damn troll anyway.

He apparently used "nerd bait".

Re:Celebration/Mourning

[AK Marc]

Is the assertion "Life arose from non-life around three billion years ago on the prehistoric earth" falsifiable without resorting to some form of the anthropic principle?

Yes. Go three billion light years away with a really strong telescope. Tell me what you see.

Re:Likely result

[E++99]

He re-read the paper because of the quotes by creationists. It was re-reading the paper that revealed the errors in the paper. It was the errors is the paper that caused him to withdraw it.

Do you get it? He withdrew the paper because it was wrong. Creationists drove him to discover that it was wrong, but their quotes are not WHY it was withdrawn.

If you re-read the article, you will note that he admits that he withdrew the paper because he was embarrassed to be associated with creationists. If he had just randomly discovered mistakes in one of his 1955 papers, I don't believe there is any way he would have withdrawn it.

Re: the "humans caused global warming" crowd

[giafly]

This story is great news for people who worry about global warming, because however hot the earth gets, even if it gets hot enough to kill us all, when the earth eventually cools it seems that life 2.0 will spontaneously evolve.