NASA and the
New Life Form

A few days ago there was an announcement of a "new life" form here on earth. It was an article on the web site of the journal Science. Some of the authors were employees of NASA.

It was a bacterium that uses arsenic in place of phosphate and it was discovered in Mono Lake.

NASA then had a press conference.

After a while, people began noticing flaws in the research method, flaws in the analysis, etc. and that the whole announcement was hyped, in that the bacterium evolved from old life forms and isn't that much different.

At this point NASA decided all questions about the "new life" form should be handled in writing through the review process.

A SLATE article states that if NASA were willing to have a press conference on this then they should let the authors answer questions directly, in public. If not, they are being hypocritical.

I'll say that NASA looks bad here. They made a mistake in the announcement and they should admit it (and the NASA officials who were behind the PA announcement should be disciplined). Yes, if they don't do that they are a little bit hypocritical (only one PA announcement).

Notwithstanding this, the number of questions is a lot and handling it all in public would be difficult so I sympathize with NASA here (even though NASA is responsible for the mess).