Arsenic-Friendly Microbe Now Seems Unlikely 122
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."
Re:Oh well... (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.