[meteorite-list] Arsenic Bacteria

[info at moonmarsrocks.com]

Hoax may have been a strong word, Phil, because it implies motive, but
you are right-on to flag it nonetheless. Sloppy and overzealous would be
the words that come to my mind. As a scientist, I was trained to be
neither. Clearly, they made a mistake, or overlooked something. That's
why you seek out collaboration. Of course they knew it would cause a
stir when they published it. They wanted to be the first to show such.
Egos. Unfortunately, it was very premature for them to jump out and make
a claim with such dramatic and sweeping implications without first
waiting for independent confirmation. The good news is, in the end the
subject was clarified by subsequent research. 

This is why the recent Higgs Boson announcement was the result of two
completely independent teams coming to the same conclusion after very
extensive research. By the way, the media has in my mind been only
somewhat successful in explaning for lay people what the HB particle
discovery is and means. Here's my most simplified version of it for the
non-theoretical physical scientists (mostly everybody): the Higgs Boson
particle is what correlates energy to matter, it makes the = in the
E=MC*2 equation possible....

Best, 
Daniel

Daniel Noyes
Genuine Moon & Mars Meteorite Rocks
info at moonmarsrocks.com
www.moonmarsrocks.com

 


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Message: 11
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2012 23:17:59 -0400
From: "JoshuaTreeMuseum" <joshuatreemuseum at embarqmail.com>
Subject: [meteorite-list] Arsenic Bacteria Hoax
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Message-ID: <F730CE7994A240008E1EF07C078545FC at ET>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original

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.


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