Will you take the 'arsenic-life' test?

[diamond_dust06]

Critiques prompt researchers to offer samples of poison-tolerant microbe to doubters.

Erika Check Hayden

At first, it sounded like the discovery of the century: a bacterium that can survive by using the toxic element arsenic instead of phosphorus in its DNA and in other biomolecules

Comments

[cheez_ball]

Sounds like a failure of peer review. They should have seen there was phosphate in the media before publishing the paper. They should have also sent the bugs/media recipe out to other labs to do independent testing in exchange for co-authorship.

[diamond_dust06]

They should have also sent the bugs/media recipe out to other labs to do independent testing in exchange for co-authorship.

Is this common when microbiologists describe new species/variants?

[enaranie]

Ugh yes, I hate how Science formats articles too!

So many scientists who are bloggers blew up over that the moment it was published. It was a failure of critical thinking in my opinion. People just got too excited about the possibilities to check whether they were real or not.

[diamond_dust06]

There was no reason for NASA to hold that press conference. I think they should shoulder most of the blame regarding public perception of this research.

[romantic_india]

I liked what PZ Myers had to say about this: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/further_panning_of_the_arsenic.php

[diamond_dust06]

I like what he has to say about everything tbh. I thought he was unfair to the potential implications of this article had the results been more strongly substantiated, but he's spot on about Science's, NASA's, and the authors' failure.

[keeperofthekeys]

Thanks for the update on this.

And I second your 'ugh" to Science articles. Trying to read them just gives me a headache, and Nature has increasingly become that way too. I've really stopped trusting a lot of the articles that come out of either of those publications given how prone they are to publishing articles with shock value but with shitty data and that are clearly poorly peer-reviewed.

[diamond_dust06]

I think this is a good example of why it's foolish to pay more attention to certain journals just because of notoriety. Nature and Science are brand names now, and that's no reason to take them any more seriously than other journals.