Seems to be par for the course nowadays: notoriety and money first with science coming in a distant second. Here's a bit more at WUWT about NASAs arsenic bug:
It seems that in their flawed zeal to get some press coverage, NASA again has egg of their faces, reminiscent of the Mars fossil microbe fiasco. It’s more “science by press release” gone wild. Slate.com has a scathing review of the fire that is raging in the microbiology camp over this press release:
“It would be really cool if such a bug existed,” said San Diego State University’s Forest Rohwer, a microbiologist who looks for new species of bacteria and viruses in coral reefs. But, he added, “none of the arguments are very convincing on their own.” That was about as positive as the critics could get. “This paper should not have been published,” said Shelley Copley of the University of Colorado…
5 comments:
I bet the next press release will be "Cern to be swallowed up by homebrew Black hole..." ... Or is that press release from the religious fanatics... Hmm...
Oh, wait... Cern accelerates global warming, would be a good one... :-D
Regards from up North, in freezing Norway...
of course politics are now in play so we may never know the actual truth, but NASA's been caught with it's pants down plenty of times - it was just a publicity stunt for funding, nothing else. sadly they've been reduced to this.
I can just imagine some report from CERN on how they are being carbon neutral, Jan: 'Yes, the power we use generates a lot of CO2, but we smash it into sub-atomic particles!'
I propose a new phenomenon in this Internet linked world, which describes the high-speed trashing of science by press release and political advocacy. Let's call it 'The Hansen Effect'.
sigh, why am I not surprised? I really want to support NASA but they make it so difficult with this crap, so it goes..:)
Jeff, I think what's happening, in this Internet age of easy access to information, is that we are all growing more cynical and wiser.
Organizations and people can no longer be put up on pedestals when so much detail of their behaviour is so quickly open to inspection and criticism. Whether or not this is a good thing is open to debate.
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