[meteorite-list] Arsenic Bacteria Hoax

[Howard Wu]

Have just experienced the Sutter Mill hunt locally and lived to see all the news story that came out of it and if gave me the same feeling. That is typical for what goes for press coverage in science today. I've heard Felicia Wolf-Simeon lecture locally. She would agree with you about the extraterestial spin having caused nothing but headaches. Still when you study chemophiles and extremophiles one can expect to see the unexpected. Arsenic is definite apart of these cells biochemistry. Selenium has been seen substituting for sulfer in other organisms, so it's not that far fetch a concept. Chickens benefit a little arsenic too.... Howard Wu

Howard,

You're right, calling it a hoax may have been overstating my opinion. But it was definitely a publicity stunt. If you claim to have discovered a completely new life form, unknown to science and possibly of alien origin, it's just good manners to wait until it's independently confirmed. They jumped the gun with their premature announcement. As if they didn't know that it would create a lot of hoopla and possibly mislead a lot of people! I don't know what their exact motives were, but announcing that you've found a living DNA chain with arsenic replacing phosphorus compounds before it's been confirmed seems a little hoaxy to me. I'm no scientist, but I'm still annoyed by that whole cold fusion thing.

Phil Whitmer
Joshua Tree Earth & Space Museum



This current news story is as unfortunate as the original NASA story spin of Wolf-Simon's article release two years ago. Hoax implies a deliberate fabrication of evidence. There's no call here to insult the personal integrity of the scientists for publishing their earlier experimental observations on the Mono Lake arsenic tolerant bacteria. Also never concluded in the original experiments would be that arsenate could completely replace phophate, just that it might have been substituted for less than one percent of phosphorus at a cost. They weren't looking for any kind of attention themselves to create this a publicity stunt. Just over zealot news media spun into action by an interesting preliminary report. Looking forward to reading the actual article when available and new studies to follow.




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