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rfmcdonaldI blogged back in December (1, 2) about the claims--seemingly ill-founded even at the time--that California's very alkaline and saline Mono Lake supported bacteria that actually used arsenic, an element that's usually lethal to carbon-based life like our world's. If this research finding was accurate, this would have had enormous implications for biology, including the prospect of arsenic-using/arsenic-based life elsewhere. But, as I noted, even at the time, the evidence was disputed. Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait sums up the final reaction of many.
(That Scientific American article is here.)
The question being debated over on Facebook is why NASA chose to publicize such seemingly ill-founded claims. A desperate desire for publicity--and eventually, funding--is the best people have come up with.
[A]ccording to an article on Scientific American, [Rosie Redfield, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver] can confidently provide a "clear refutation" of the arsenic uptake in the organisms:
Their most striking claim was that arsenic had been incorporated into the backbone of DNA, and what we can say is that there is no arsenic in the DNA at all.
That’s a pretty clear statement! The original team, lead by Felisa Wolfe-Simon, has responded, saying they need to see a fully peer-reviewed paper before making up their minds.
I’ll note that emotions have run fairly high throughout this saga. Dr. Wolfe-Simon got a lot of attention, positive and negative, and the negative was pretty charged. I’m not surprised by the reactions of either side of this issue.
In the interest of full disclosure, when the press conference was aired, I wrote a pretty straight interpretation of it. As I wrote in a followup post, I am not a microbiologist, and I trust NASA at some level. This event shook that trust quite a bit, and I am now far less likely to take a claim at face value, even when it comes from a source like NASA.
(That Scientific American article is here.)
The question being debated over on Facebook is why NASA chose to publicize such seemingly ill-founded claims. A desperate desire for publicity--and eventually, funding--is the best people have come up with.
