(UPDATED*) Fox, Wires, etc: NASA scientists sees meteorite’s fossils, says “alien.” This time, space agency doesn’t bite
Not again? Yes, not again. Over the weekend a NASA-affiliated astrobiologist reported in a small journal with a fondness for panspermia ideas that he cracked open a rare sort of chondritic meteorite and found fossils. They look very much like cyanobacteria of known terrestrial species. He’s ‘s pretty sure they were there when the meteor hit the atmosphere. Ergo, they evolved on comets or something like that. That’s incredible, unbelievable, and stupefying. As in, fat chance.
Press coverage, such as it has been, is decidedly skeptical from just about the get go – except for where the news broke on Saturday:
- Fox News – Garrett Tenney: Exclusive: NASA Scientist Claims Evidence of Alien Life on Meteorite ; Groundbreaking revelations, it says here. The piece does have some cautionary declarations from outside sources. The journal’s editor is at a very prestigious institute. He is quoted to say (right off the journal itself, as seen in Grist below) “no other paper in the history of science has undergone such a thorough vetting.” That kind of hyperbolic gumption alone ought to set most reporter’s smell-a-rat instincts to high alert.
Even NASA is taking a purely hands-off attitude toward the assertion. This is rather unlike the initial reception that greeted the famous report 15 years ago from a larger NASA team, at the Johnson Spaceflight Center, that it too found fossil-like things and other suspicious signs of biology in an old meteorite. For one thing, that one was published in Science (something, one suspects, that the journal’s editors now regard as among its less fortunate moments).That time it took, like, a week or two before the winds of doubt reached gale force.
If you look in Grist you’ll see that the community of commenters and reviewers the journal consulted has some unexpected names on it. Such as Frank Tipler, and Harrison Schmitt. That’s a physicist with a quirky reputation, and a geologist who walked on the moon. Not the usual peer review panel.
Other, follow-up stories:
- AP – Seth Borenstein: Scientists skeptical of meteorite alien life claim;
- Bad Astronomy via CBS – Phil Plait: Alien life evidence? No so fast. Where we are told it’s bad and suspicious form for a paper to declare as unalloyed and unhedged fact what ought to be surrounded, if the author wants to be taken seriously, by a dense cloud of maybe.
- Reuters – Deborah Zabarenko: Strange life signs found on meteorites: NASA scientist ; A cautious report that does not appear to have benefited from many, or any, calls to outside astrobiologists.
- Space.com via Chr. Sci. Monitor – Clara Moskowitz: Alien fossils found in meteorite? Scientists urge skepticism ; Hmmm. She has, amid the scoffing, NASA’s Chris McKay saying he thinks they’re from space, too. Really? (UPDATE: As a commenter notes, McKay did NOT say he thinks they were once alive). Another expert Moskowitz called, Rosie Redfield (remember he assaults on the arsenic eating microbes of Mono Lake?) , even makes fun of the journal’s layout.
- LA Times – Thomas H. Maugh II: Scientists dismiss alien life report;
Maybe this is the real deal. But….naaahhh. This will be hard for any serious science journalists to cover – even to debunk it. It is too easy a target, and hence too boring, for many such seasoned reporters to tackle with any brio at all.
*UPDATE (ie, twisting the knife): Some did have a good time after all:
- Time Magazine: Michael D. Lemonick: Alien Life discovered in a Meteorite! Or Maybe Not ; As he writes, “a little history lesson is in order,” including previous misadventures in astrobiology and the Journal of Cosmology where the paper appeared. An even more telling take-down of the journal, which Lemonick (thank you very much) also links to, are in the next bullets down.
- Somatic Marker (blog) David Dobbs: Journal of Cosmology Going Out with Big Bang ; Turns out the journal’s on its last legs, and its publisher is tossing fireballs at the powerful evil forces that done it in….
- Neuron Culture (blog) David Dobbs: Aliens Riding Meteorites: Arsenic Redux or Something New?:
Grist for the Mill:
Journal of Cosmology paper ; List and links to commenters (the online ‘peer review’) .
- Charlie Petit
March 7th, 2011 at 3:55 pm
Not too boring for me. Kind of fun, actually:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2057461,00.html
March 7th, 2011 at 5:58 pm
There’s lots of reasons to be skeptical/cautious/even dismissive of Hoover’s conclusions, but I think critics should refrain from mocking the characters involved. The Journal of Cosmology deserves to be identified as non-peer reviewed, yes; but the snide aspersions on its layout are lame. After all, would it make a difference if it was a dolled-up pre-pub site, like arXiv? Not really. And as for the evangelical zeal and general zaniness of the researchers themselves … well, why not ditch Isaac Newton and Tycho Brahe, too?
I also think there’s a major cultural gap here. Yes, the J of Cosmo principals are, well, nutty. But they’ve earned some respect. Some of the things they’ve pushed — the presence of organic chemicals in space, the not-so-enormous barrier to chemicals developing self-replicating tendencies, the mathematical plausibility of life emerging somewhere other than Earth over trillions of years and billions of galaxies, the potential that meteorite impacts seeded, at least chemically, life on Earth — were once a joke, and now guide serious speculation.
I think they don’t care much about establishment conventions, and are just throwing out some semi-shoddy conclusions with the conviction that, if they’re right, time will prove it. If not, that will out, too. And, for all their goofiness, that’s what science is about.
FWIW, it’s also a bit fun watching NASA squirm when something can’t be press-conferenced, press-released and generally managed from above. That “Um, we knew *nothing* about this, it’s not us, why don’t you call him yourself?” disclaimer of theirs was priceless.
March 7th, 2011 at 7:03 pm
Brandon – You’re a gentleman, Mr. Keim. Thanks for reminding the rest of us that it’s almost always better to be civil than snide. All best – Charlie
March 7th, 2011 at 10:24 pm
While being civil, I was also inaccurate: the Journal of Cosmology is peer reviewed.
March 8th, 2011 at 2:56 am
I second Brandon’s message here. While we all have to have rules and fast heuristics for judging credibility, an central tenet of empiricism is that authority rests not in institutions or people but in facts and evidence. It may make sense to be extra skeptical of something published in the Journal of Cosmology and covered first at Fox, but to cite those venues as part of your proof something is false is rather unscientific. The value of an idea depends not on its point of origin but in its testing. If a drunk on the street tells you light bends, does that make the idea less valid than if Einstein tells you the same thing? You won’t know till you test it.
Is there life somewhere else out there? Seems a fair chance there is. One day, one of these alien finds may prove true. We’ll feel a bit less silly if we dismiss it based on evidence rather than source.
I found it hard to take too the whacks at the Journal of Cosmology website. I like a pretty website too. But to hear such critiques on the blogosphere is a bit odd. Even odder to hear, from some bloggers, suggestions that it’s not a real journal because it’s online only. PLoS is online only.
March 8th, 2011 at 5:38 am
One might want to note that the Journal of Cosmology’s system of peer review is unusual — authors choose three colleagues who review their paper for them, as opposed to the more usual anonymous panel of peers.
March 9th, 2011 at 8:00 am
Charlie, I read the CSM article with interest, as I’ve interviewed Chris McKay before and wanted to see what he said after you called him out: “Space.com via Chr. Sci. Monitor – Clara Moskowitz: Alien fossils found in meteorite? Scientists urge skepticism ; Hmmm. She has, amid the scoffing, NASA’s Chris McKay saying he thinks they’re from space, too.”
McKay is never quoted as saying that these are fossils of something that was once alive. He just says that these forms probably were from space. And he says, that from what we know of meteorites, they don’t have the right environment for any life forms to survive. That sounds pretty skeptical to me.
[And wasn't this one of the arguments the first time around? The forms were probably from space or Mars, but there was no way to prove they were once alive?]
March 9th, 2011 at 10:21 am
Naomi – Excellent point. I should have parsed what Moskowitz wrote better. You’re right about the ALH84001 “microbes.” The evidence was real, but few now believe it was ever alive. I inserted a fix in the post.