Apparently someone made a mistake on the arsenic based life created by Nasa in a lab: The NASA study of arsenic-based life was fatally flawed, say scientists. - By Carl Zimmer - Slate Magazine A lot of things didn't seem right to me about it and now I know there was a lot not right.
to be fair that article does not say "its out right wrong and here's why..." its more of a comment on how bad the science was behind their paper. Honestly I feel sorry for Nasa and really any space agency. People just expect that they deliver this kinda news every few years but with out support and/or projects that really capture the publics eye they kinda get pushed to one side.
Any science agency in the tech non consumer areas really. I mean how much more do we hear of the transporter they created in Australia or the holographic TV from Illinois? All proven and shown to work but it's been years since I've heard anything. Even stem cell research has been a bit quiet in the bio sciences field.
Cmon NASA, this isn't rocket science! Well, not this time at least. Did this paper even make it to publication, or was NASA promoting their results before peer-review? Once again, everything we've seen so far regarding this study has been through second or third-hand media, and unfortunately none of this media seems to go into far enough depth that these seemingly glaring problems with the results became apparent to the reader. That's why I wish these stories would link to the actual papers they reference.
"This Paper Should Not Have Been Published" and the published paper here: A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus | Science/AAAS They didn't give it enough time to actually workout. From what I gather the arsenic elements ended up just falling off.
There were also (according to the article in the OP) numerous sources of potential contamination in terms of both the arsenic concentration analysis, and the levels of phosphorous in the lab environment which were not properly controlled. I could only read the abstract off that site, unfortunately, but it sounds like there was a lot of substandard labwork in the bare bones of the methodology.
Nasa has been beat down to a shell of what It should be.. its pretty sad, just hope whatever corporate entity takes over space travel doesn't totally ruin it for all of us..
Felisa Wolfe-Simon Is the Young NASA Scientist Who Led the 'New Life' Research Whoops. Guess someone was a little too hot to make a name for herself and didn't observe proper controls. Let this be a fine example for everyone who ever claims "Science" is some conspiracy where everyone covers for everyone else. I and a few others talked about what was potentially wrong with this in that closed thread. Turns out our questions were good ones. "How are the arsenates stabilized against hydrolysis in DNA?". Apparently, "They aren't.". - Coeloptera
The problem is for every one mistake any science research group makes they make at least 100 solid discoveries and theories which don't have that "shock and awe" factor that many don't realize. Nasa's just one of the bigger ones and each mistake they make gets scrutinized and counts as a million strikes against them but people forget what Nasa has down right vs done wrong.
I couldn't agree more, I Love what nasa has done through out it's history, I was just expressing my sadness at what has been done to Nasa over the last couple years.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Ideally this should've been caught in the peer-review process, but it illustrates the self-correcting nature of science nonetheless. There actually was quite a breakthrough in stem cells very recently. A monkey that had been paralysed is now hopping around again in a research facility in Tokyo.
