Proof of alien life?

[tkdguy]

A NASA scientist claims he has found evidence of alien life in rare meteorites. Scientists are still examining his findings, of course.

 

Count me in with the skeptics, but I won't complain if I'm wrong.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

Extraterrestrial microbes are all but proven already.

 

The real game-changer will be when we hear about the first extraterrestrial complex life-form.

[baronspam]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

A number of years ago trace fossil evidence was found in meteorites that some claimed was an indication of microscopic life. The interpretation of these finding has been, to put it mildly, controversial. Some academics have held that it is manifestly self evident that extra-terrestrial microbes exists (or at least did at one point) and other equally qualified individiual look at the same rocks and find such claims to be utter nonsense.

 

The unfortunate truth is that just becuase you have a degree in some kind of physical science it doesn't mean that you aren't subject to emotionalism, irrational bias, indefensable pet theories,stubborn refusal to evaluate evidence, and rampant politics. These factors are collectively known as "Academia".

[Cancer]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

That's an interesting-looking image in the lined page, but I'm going to need to track down the article itself. I am not sanguine about that: the Yahoo News thing says it was published in the "Journal of Cosmology", and I have never heard of that journal before. And aside from things that aren't published any more, I am not sure I've encountered a new (to me) title of a supposedly peer-reviewed astronomy-related journal in ... 20+ years.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

The thing that boggles my mind is the amount of skepticism that scientists in general have for such journals. Healthy skepticism is expected, but this seems to skepticism bordering on vitriol. Considering the number of planets scientists have found just in the last decade, in our own galaxy alone, it seems to me that it is quite literally mathematically impossible for our planet to be the only one capable of developing and supporting life. Why would finding evidence of life from elsewhere be shocking or even considered preposterous to any scientist in the 21st century?

[Cancer]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

The scientific community is built on reputation, like it or not. That explicitly includes the peer-reviewed journals. (In fact, peer-review is sort of a high-falutin' way of establishing your reputation as a scientist; publishing solid, important papers in them is the way a journal establishes its reputation as a journal.)

 

The bit in Yahoo News was not written by a scientist (or, perhaps, anyone who talked to a scientist). "Shock" or "preposterous" is not what any scientist would think of the idea that life exists elsewhere. Finding clear proof that it does exist elsewhere (including proof that it existed before the Solar System was fully formed) wold be welcome news to just about the entire scientific community. But scientists are pretty persnickety about evidence and proof, and if you don't have proof and/or refuse to show it to people, then you're off in the Weekly World News bin. That pretty much flips the bozo bit on you forever.

 

If a paper appears in an unknown publication (especially one with as crucial a finding as this one ought to be), an inevitable reaction is, why there? Why not in Science or Nature, which would all but have knife fights to have such a finding announced in their pages, if it passed muster? The implication is that it doesn't pass muster for those journals. Now, I want to read that paper, and I admit I will not be able to pass much judgment on it, because microfossil analysis is most definitely out of my proven skillset. But I will say that there are things which, if they are present, would raise my apprehension about the validity of the finding even so.

 

Finally, being wrong about a finding doesn't necessarily diminish your reputation as a scientist. In fact, the best single talk I've ever attended, as well as the greatest act of scientific statesmanship I've ever seen, was a retraction. The speaker explained what they thought they'd found, then what went wrong, and concluded with "... and we are terribly sorry." Ovation.

[Spence]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

The thing that boggles my mind is the amount of skepticism that scientists in general have for such journals. Healthy skepticism is expected' date=' but this seems to skepticism bordering on vitriol. Considering the number of planets scientists have found just in the last decade, in our own galaxy alone, it seems to me that it is quite literally mathematically impossible for our planet to be the only one capable of developing and supporting life. Why would finding evidence of life from elsewhere be shocking or even considered preposterous to any scientist in the 21st century?[/quote']

 

The scientific community is built on reputation, like it or not. That explicitly includes the peer-reviewed journals. (In fact, peer-review is sort of a high-falutin' way of establishing your reputation as a scientist; publishing solid, important papers in them is the way a journal establishes its reputation as a journal.)

 

Hence the decline in western scientific and technological advancement. Most of academia are much more concerned with receiving their 'grants' than advancing truth and science.

 

Take the entire process of 'peer review'. Boiled down to the simplest form it is basically the scientific communities 'good old boys' decide whether a piece has merit or not. In the last few years the idea of the peer review process being neutral and unbiased has been almost completely replaced by ‘toe the line so they will fund us’. How many times in the last few years have we seen them blatantly ignore pertinent information or gloss over blatantly falsified data based on an artificially propped up ‘consensus’?

 

The question everyone should be asking is not “why the skepticism”, but rather “whose sweetheart money deal would be threatened”? The term peer review has lost credibility everywhere but the insolated caves of modern Academia. There are a few institutions that are hanging on, but they are eroding fast as the quick buck and stiff “I cannot be wrong” omnipotent stance of the “tenured academic” runs rampant.

 

My guess is that the enforced skepticism will remain in place under threat of banishment until a few old codgers in the “smoke filled room” die off or retire.

 

At least these days they cannot have you tortured or burned for thinking....remember the world is flat and the sun revolves around the sun....

 

 

end rant.....

[Sociotard]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

This scientist did read the material and pretty well debunked it. He did echo Cancer's point that this would've been in Science or Nature had it been scientifically valid. However, he also looked over the graphs, illustrations and arguments. He said that it was about as valid as those guys who pour over aerial photos of mars to look for signs of artifacts.

 

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/did_scientists_discover_bacter.php

[McCoy]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

Extraterrestrial microbes are all but proven already.

 

The real game-changer will be when we hear about the first extraterrestrial complex life-form.

There will not be universal acceptance until the have live specimens, if then.

 

From the reading I've done, from my back-of-envelope attempts to solve the Drake equation, I'm convinced life exist elsewhere in the universe and panspermia has not been disproven as a hypothesis yet.

 

But this is not proof. It's the Stewart test. I don't accept the Stewart test as proof from the ID'ers, so I cannot in good conscience accept it when I like the result.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

I do think, if there is life out there and we do eventually explore and find it, the first life we find may be something of this nature...simple organisms. It's quite possible we might find non-sapient lifeforms on dozens of worlds before we encounter a real alien civilization(or even a species with the potential to become "civilized").

[Markdoc]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

Hence the decline in western scientific and technological advancement. Most of academia are much more concerned with receiving their 'grants' than advancing truth and science.

 

Wow. So much uninformed prejudice in one sentence. I guess the internet, mobile phones, stents, MRIs and every form of technological and scientific progress of the last few years were all invented by fairies.

 

Who knew?

 

Actually they mostly came out of academia, which remains the driving engine of technological advance. The truth is of course that the way you get grants - the only way - is to come up with an idea so good they can't turn you down. In medicine and bioscience, only about 1 idea in 6 actually makes the cut, and that number's going down because the competition is becoming ever more fierce. In some fields, it's less than that.

 

Take the entire process of 'peer review'. Boiled down to the simplest form it is basically the scientific communities 'good old boys' decide whether a piece has merit or not. In the last few years the idea of the peer review process being neutral and unbiased has been almost completely replaced by ‘toe the line so they will fund us’. How many times in the last few years have we seen them blatantly ignore pertinent information or gloss over blatantly falsified data based on an artificially propped up ‘consensus’?

 

Honestly? Never. Never, ever. Anyone who did so would be torn a new one by his colleagues who would then gleefully cast the carcasse of his ruined career on the dustheap, as one less competitor to worry about. Here's a hint about how the real world works. You don't get a grant and you don't get funding, for saying "Yeah, what he said". If all you have ever done is toe some line you don't get tenure, don't get invitations and you don't get respect. The way - the only way - you get those things is by treading on toes and doing something new. I started my career by getting into a fight with a professor emeritus at Harvard.

 

He won that fight ... and then apologised to me 6 years later, at a meeting in the UK - by which time my ideas had become mainstream (and now it's a medical technology used to fight some cancers). Just opposing what was then the standard line, got my work so much exposure that I could prove my ideas. That's how the whole system works.

 

And peer review is not "the good old boys" - peer review for leading journals includes literally tens of thousands of people from around the world, the vast majority of whom the editors don't know and will never meet. When an editor (and yeah, I'm an editor) gets a paper for review (and I get multiple papers every week: sometimes several a day), I check them for content, basic english and then select reviewers from a list generated based on their publications and specialities. I don't have time to **** about deciding who would be best to toe some imaginary party line: I choose a half dozen off a computer generated list based on their expertise and send them form letters. If the reviewers disagree, I assign new reviewers - they don't know each other and don't get names, so they have no idea, usually who else has/is reviewing. It's not like a bunch of guys sitting round in a smoky room discussing things. The process is pretty transparent - everyone involved has to put their names to what they wrote - and anyone playing favourites (and I've seen a few attempts to game the system) usually get dumped pretty smartly. In some isolated fields perhaps publications are rare enough and the field small enough for everyone to know each other, but that sure as hell is not the general rule.

 

The most complaints about peer review are from people whose work is so rubbish it never gets published. Controversy won't hurt a paper - in fact, it will improve its chances of getting out there. If it takes a stab - that is even reasonably supported by evidence - at the field's sacred cows, it is more or less guaranteed to get published. Academia and publishing thrive on controversy.

 

The question everyone should be asking is not “why the skepticism”' date=' but rather “whose sweetheart money deal would be threatened”? The term peer review has lost credibility everywhere but the insolated caves of modern Academia. There are a few institutions that are hanging on, but they are eroding fast as the quick buck and stiff “I cannot be wrong” omnipotent stance of the “tenured academic” runs rampant.[/size']

 

My guess is that the enforced skepticism will remain in place under threat of banishment until a few old codgers in the “smoke filled room” die off or retire.

 

This is the stuff of fantasy. Peer review isn't shrinking. It's growing, almost faster than we can deal with. It's not just in academia - industry is more and more opening up to peer review (albeit under NDA) as a way of honing their own work. I've just done exactly that for BARDA in the US a month ago.

 

At least these days they cannot have you tortured or burned for thinking....remember the world is flat and the sun revolves around the sun....

 

Yup, and it was exactly that kind of pronouncement on high that peer review has helped slay. Skepticism is key to progress and always has been. Peer review can be summed up in the simple phrase "Oh yeah? Prove it!" If you can't, you don't get published. If you don't get published, you don't get grants. And if you don't get grants your career in academia is likely to be undistinguished, short ... or probably both.

 

What really hurts western civilization is the mistaken idea that everyone's opinion is of equal worth and that ideas should be treated as equal, regardless of the facts marshaled to support them.

 

Cheers, Mark

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

Hence the decline in western scientific and technological advancement. Most of academia are much more concerned with receiving their 'grants' than advancing truth and science.

 

Take the entire process of 'peer review'. Boiled down to the simplest form it is basically the scientific communities 'good old boys' decide whether a piece has merit or not. In the last few years the idea of the peer review process being neutral and unbiased has been almost completely replaced by ‘toe the line so they will fund us’. How many times in the last few years have we seen them blatantly ignore pertinent information or gloss over blatantly falsified data based on an artificially propped up ‘consensus’?

 

The question everyone should be asking is not “why the skepticism”, but rather “whose sweetheart money deal would be threatened”? The term peer review has lost credibility everywhere but the insolated caves of modern Academia. There are a few institutions that are hanging on, but they are eroding fast as the quick buck and stiff “I cannot be wrong” omnipotent stance of the “tenured academic” runs rampant.

 

My guess is that the enforced skepticism will remain in place under threat of banishment until a few old codgers in the “smoke filled room” die off or retire.

 

At least these days they cannot have you tortured or burned for thinking....remember the world is flat and the sun revolves around the sun....

 

 

end rant.....

 

Holy cow, Spence! You've realised that science is just a discursive game with rules rigged by the hegemonic interests of late capitalism. You don't touch on how bad things actually are, but maybe you're unaware of just how entirely, to paraphrase Sokal, "physical reality" is, at bottom, a social and linguistic construct, a "liberatory science" and an "emancipatory mathematics", spurning "the elite caste canon of 'high science'", must be established for a "postmodern science [that] provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project."

 

It is, however, clear that you recognise the validity of the critique of science generated from within post-colonial, gender, post-human, and queer studies. Remember, though, in the words of one of your favourite thinkers (the man who originated the argument that ideas serve entrenched interests, rather than the other way round), "the point of philosophy is not to understand the world, but rather to change it."

[megaplayboy]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

Hey, I took a Philosophy of Science class once, a long long time ago. Danged if I can remember anything, except something about a "grue chair"(is it green or is it blue?) and something about ontology.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

Holy cow' date=' Spence! You've realised that science is just a discursive game with rules rigged by the hegemonic interests of late capitalism. You don't touch on how bad things actually are, but maybe you're unaware of just how entirely, to paraphrase Sokal, "physical reality" is, at bottom, a social and linguistic construct, a "liberatory science" and an "emancipatory mathematics", spurning "the elite caste canon of 'high science'", must be established for a "postmodern science [that] provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project."

 

Actually, this sounds like a paraphrase of Sokal's article for Social Text which he later revealed to be a deliberate hoax. His own opinions were quite the opposite, which was the whole point of hoaxing Social Text to begin with.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

Actually' date=' this sounds like a paraphrase of Sokal's article for Social Text which he later revealed to be a deliberate hoax. His own opinions were quite the opposite, which was the whole point of hoaxing Social Text to begin with.

 

No kidding!

[Markdoc]

Re: Proof of alien life?

 

The responses are starting to come in:

 

NASA: "Don't look at us! The guy may work for us, but we had nothing to do with this!"

As you might expect, Bad Astrology has plenty of comments and links:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/05/has-life-been-found-in-a-meteorite/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/07/followup-thoughts-on-the-meteorite-fossils-claim/

 

cheers, Mark