Last week, I posted on a widely-reported NASA contention that agency scientists had caused microbes to accept a diet of arsenic, rather than phosphorus, thereby expanding the possible bases of life. (The contention was published in the journal Science and reported widely.)
Over the weekend, scientists in America and abroad began to challenge the findings, as not merely wrong, but wrong through a shoddy methodology. Rosie Redfield, a professor of microbiology at the University of British Columbia (among many others) contends that the study’s methodology is fatally compromised.
The scientists behind the study are now reluctant to engage in public debate about it:
“Any discourse will have to be peer-reviewed in the same manner as our paper was, and go through a vetting process so that all discussion is properly moderated,” wrote Felisa Wolfe-Simon of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. “The items you [questions from author and Slate scince writer Carl Zimmer] are presenting do not represent the proper way to engage in a scientific discourse and we will not respond in this manner.”
Zimmer, reporting on the challenges to the study, writes that
While Redfield considers Wolfe-Simon’s research “flim-flam,” she think it’s fine for the NASA scientists to hold off responding to their critics. She is working on a formal letter to Science detailing her objections. But Jonathan Eisen of UC-Davis doesn’t let the scientists off so easily. “If they say they will not address the responses except in journals, that is absurd,” he said. “They carried out science by press release and press conference. Whether they were right or not in their claims, they are now hypocritical if they say that the only response should be in the scientific literature.”
There will be many errors and mistakes among scientists, and not every theory (few actually) will prove sound. Yet, it says nothing good about NASA-affiliated scientists that they’re quick to hold a press conference to advance their findings, but reluctant to entertain critical replies in the same manner.