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."
Oh well... (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
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.
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Personally, I'd like to see some experiments attempting to create an arsenic-based politician
God no, politicians are already toxic.
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Someone already got started on a polonium-based politician, but it didn't end well.
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What would selective breeding really tell us about ET? That if we find another Earth maybe we'll find arsenic based life bred by human counterparts?
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I wish the media would stay out of science until (and scientists stop reporting to the media), until their evidence goes threw the peer review process.
Why did CFC get rather quick fixing when they found that it was causing holes in the Ozone layer, while Global Warming became a political nightmare? I think it is because the media got a hold of the CFC thing once the bulk of the science was peer reviewed and posted publicly. Global Warming, on the other hand had released its finding before the full peer re
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Drowning Polar Bares
Actually as far as I'm aware nobody has drowned during the midwinter Brass Monkey swim at Antarctica.
And ursus maritimus is quite furry at all times.
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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...
You're not going to be able to do any better than millions of years of evolution by random mutation and natural selection. The selective breeding we've done so far is penny-ante stuff compared to the amount of molecular changes needed to support an arsenate-dependent biochemistry. It's not just the DNA and RNA; the underlying compone
A win for science (Score:1)
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and unfortunately a win for the nutters who say that we (the earth) are the only life made by God.
Odd, I've never met any of them. However unlikely it may be, they actually could be right. What's nutty is assuming without any proof whatever that there is life elsewhere. There probably is, but just saying "it has to be" is stupid.
A sad day for hot scientists (Score:2, Informative)
It's too bad. The author of the original research was totally hot.
Re:A sad day for hot scientists (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm going to go ahead and propose the hypothesis that your comment illustrates the origin of the whole problem/situation.
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She looks good, but totally hot? You must have a low bar for totally hot. That is reserved for those who are.... well... totally hot.
Re:A sad day for hot scientists (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well with her science being bashed against the rocks, her looks are all she's got left.
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As I understand it, the controversy really heated up when this researcher started shouting 'SEXISM!' at the first sign of peer criticism. As Sagan said (paraphrased) "If you're gonna make an extraordinary claim, be prepared to back it up with extraordinary proof!" Not assertions that those mean old boys are picking on you because you're a girl.
Is this really true? What is your source for that?
I believe that one of the biggest critics of the original research was Rosie Redfield (who is female).
Redfield is also a co-author of on the Science papers.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=study-fails-to-confirm-existence [scientificamerican.com]
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/12/this_paper_should_not_have_been_published.html [slate.com]
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"""
A 0.1 (10%) daily growth rate would result in a doubling in just over 7 days, not 10 as you 'think'. I'm not quite sure why I should trust your "scientific" analysis if you can't get your simple high school math right. (In this case simple exponential growth.)
"""
I wonder if it was written by FW-S? Bitch-fight!
But to be honest, I agree with the comment - such a level of innumeracy is unacceptible in any field which pretends to be a hard science. If sh
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As I understand it, the controversy really heated up when this researcher started shouting 'SEXISM!' at the first sign of peer criticism.
I am not a fan of this research, but I do not recall ever seeing a claim of sexism being made, at least not by Wolfe-Simon or any of the people involved in the original work. What I do remember is them stating that they wouldn't respond to criticisms until they had been formally peer-reviewed, which most people thought was a bullshit response. Peer review doesn't just me
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Well, she apparently can't do the Science for crap, so she needs something to fall back on.
According to wikipedia, she plays woodwinds. So she's got that going for her...which is nice.
Wolfe-Simon did her undergraduate studies at Oberlin College and completed a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Chemistry and a Bachelor of Music in Oboe Performance and Ethnomusicology at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
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We have peer review because scientists are biased and are poor judges of their own work. We naturally think the results we've spent long hours getting are worthwhile, and have a natural human tendency to be biased into thinking our hypotheses are correct. If her experiments didn't prove her case, her mentor should have realized it, and the reviewers should have sent it back. She w
Re:21st Century Science... (Score:4, Informative)
OH a correction.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Religion simply can not do that because GOD IS NEVER WRONG...grrrrr blarggggg ahhhhhhh
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Meh. People anthropomorphize all the time. What he meant is that the scientific method, both formally and in practice, includes skepticism as a fundamental feature. The standard of evidence is set higher than 50%+1 and you try to disprove hypotheses and theories.
Most religions, on the other hand, claim absolute truth.
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yes, it sometime takes a long time, but the Catholic Church is the only religious institution doing that kind of retraction.
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You're using a strawman.
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And then I recall a story just last week about how Germany passed an anti-child abuse law and the Jewish and Islamic faiths are up in arms and joining forces condemning said law because their faith requires them to "correct" a flaw god made in men. And then I recall an even more disturbing story: ritual could pose fatal risk to infants [cnn.com]
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I'm not sure you understand what circumsision means to the Jews. It wasn't to correct a mistake in design, it was a physical demonstration on the part of Abram (Abraham) that he entered into the covenant with God. Without that demarcation, the descendants of Abraham would be apart from the covenant with God. Correcting a mistake was never part of the deal. It was a marker to seperate those chosen from those not chosen.
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I'm not sure you understand what circumsision means to the Jews. It wasn't to correct a mistake in design, it was a physical demonstration on the part of Abram (Abraham) that he entered into the covenant with God. Without that demarcation, the descendants of Abraham would be apart from the covenant with God. Correcting a mistake was never part of the deal. It was a marker to seperate those chosen from those not chosen.
I note that the same passage apparently approves the sale of children.
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Unlike in Science, the masses typically don't accept a paper as end-all truth(unless we are talking Catholicism). It typically takes several groups to determine something is correct or wrong, and only followers of those groups end up agreeing. At least until the other groups reac
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Unlike in Science, the masses typically don't accept a paper as end-all truth(unless we are talking Catholicism). It typically takes several groups to determine something is correct or wrong, and only followers of those groups end up agreeing. At least until the other groups reach the same conclusions.
Actually, that sounds a lot like Science. Competing labs/universities reach different conclusions; third and fourth parties try to replicate results; arguments and debates erupt over mailing lists and academic conferences; etc. And in the absence of consensus you end up with factions adhering to, say the Standard Model or one of the flavors of String Theory.
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She didn't admit any mistake, question any methods, she gripped onto her statements with ego and a religious fanaticism. And it happens every day.
Yes, but she's not the Pope. As other find flaws with her research, and these flaws are confirmed by multiple parties, then her findings (or "beliefs") will fall out of the general body of knowledge. If someone reaches a different religious conclusion, such as gay people can not be priests or bishops, then they will break off and form a splinter group (cf. recent happenings in the Anglican Church) and maintain that their beliefs are more valid than those of the original group. And due to our (read: Ameri
The actual papers (Score:2)
Great job from commercial publishers (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.
Re:Great job from commercial publishers (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.
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He said you're overstating it. Which you are, at least in this post. I was actually about to reply that your first post was a tautology.
High impact factor journals publish things that are "trendy," i.e. of interest to many scientists. These things tend to be new, unexpected, or both. You can show mathematically that things that are new and unexpected are more likely to be incorrect, regardless of the quality of the research.
But good research that simply reaches the wrong conclusion isn't retracted (yes,
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How can a journal charging $15 to read a retractation notice can be considered nonprofit http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6041/404.1.full [sciencemag.org]. So pay per article user must first pay to read the paper then pay $15 to read why it was retracted. They might be technically and legally non profit but they're certainly not non profit in spirit.
Just because an organization is non-profit does not mean that its budget appears out of thin air. Every publisher, including the academic publishers, charges either the re
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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.
Science is not a commercial publication; it is produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science [aaas.org], a non-profit organization. Many people have made the argument that the problem is with high-profile, "prestige" journals, who do frequently seem to favor publicity and high citation counts over sound science. H
Life will find a way (Score:1)
To keep those fat grant checks rolling in.
Yes, yes, Good Science has corrected Bad Science, but the people that did that Bad Science should go and consult on Discovery Channel "docu-dramas" rather than stinking up academia with their attention whoring claims.
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the people that did that Bad Science should go and consult on Discovery Channel "docu-dramas"
So you want them to peddle their Bad Science to the general public, who then go out and vote for School Board members?
More incomplete research (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds like these folks made the same error as the original author. Let us not speculate on weather the arsenic has been assimilated into critical molecules inside the organism. Let them instead determine the chemical composition of the actual molecules in the organism and say definitively what is going on. I for one took the original research as somewhat speculative sin
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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.
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Was the claim that As was incorporated into the DNA, or into some other cell constituent. I thought it was supposed to be part of the metabolic process, so wouldn't expect to find it in DNA.
Interestingly... (Score:1)
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Re:Why aren't we redistributing Bill Gate's Money? (Score:4, Informative)
Right now, all we have the shuttle
No, you don't
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When you have billions (in value or cash), it's easy to be philanthropic.
I'm infinitely more impressed by the guy who was earning 20k and had pledged to give a million away within ten years. And was doing it.
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ROFL
Thanks for that.
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I don't buy in to the "more humans = bad" paradigm. It's well known that the highest birth rates are in impoverished countries that have high infant mortality. Humans are instinctively driven to grow population levels so the unintended consequence to 3rd world living conditions is an increased growth rate relative to 1st world countries. John the middle class only-child has n-resources required in his upbringing, while if 6 children die before John VII the Sub-Saharan African child survives, he has N*7 reso
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Space Elevators and Arsenic friendly bacteria... These are the examples provided by those who advocate wealth confiscation as superior appropriations of the earth's limited resources than would otherwise be made by the proposed victim of asset forfeiture... Bill Gates, you know? The philanthropist and founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, a charity which has squandered the money in question on such petty causes as CURING MALARIA!
If you were looking you could not find a better example of why social engineered redistribution of wealth is less beneficial to society than leaving it the hands of the people who accumulated it in the first place.
Just in case anyone thought the above morons were on to something, the nationalization of private property would cause an instant market panic which would destabilize the economy and translate in to a DECREASE in government revenues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
He should have called it the Arthur curve.
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Apparently you didn't notice that the Shuttles are now on their way to various museums around the country. Damn, stupid, ignorant AND uninformed. That's quite a combination you've got going there.
I agree, the gradual, ever-increasing slide into the abyss of mediocrity...SQUIRREL!!!
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A standard space elevator isn't actually technologically possible right now. We still don't have materials strong enough to make a tether that can reach that far without breaking under its own weight, even with an optimal shape. Don't say graphene, by the way. It might be strong enough, but we still can't actually manufacture it in enough quantity to even test the idea. Also, since graphene is naturally a sheet, you'd have to roll it up into tubes, in which case it's just carbon nanotubes, which we've know
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I think you need to go back to economics school. If the all property were nationalized, sure the income tax would decrease, but that doesn't mean that GDP has stopped or decreased. In fact I assume that if the government were tax the money people used for consumer spending, and instead invest the money into capital infrastructure, that it would increase our productivity, employment, and after tax income vs CPI.
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I can think of better things to with billions of dollars than create strange bacteria. The space elevator comes to mind.
Craig Venter already made an artificial bacterium. Pretty sure there has been at least one slashdot story covering it. Making artificial life is kind of a "We are going to land on the moon" type achievement. A lot was learned or will be learned along the way, like how to manipulate large amounts of DNA sequences, and requirements for life. The longer term goal seems to be to make bacteria that will eat oil spills, or make oil or whatever else we want. Organic nanomachines.
I don't know a whole lot ab
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slow on the draw there, I see.
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