Alien fossils?

[makc]

Is there a topic for this already?

fossils of bacteria found in an extremely rare class of meteorite called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. (There are only nine such meteorites on planet Earth.) Hoover’s findings were published late Friday night in the Journal of Cosmology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

linky

[rstevenson]

The paper is Here, in full. Comments will be published starting Monday.

I'm a little concerned that the paper is published on a web page containing advertising for books with titles like Biological Big Bang Panspermia, Life; Abiogenesis The Origins of LIfe; and Life on Earth Came From Other Planets. Does The Journal of Cosmology have an axe to grind?

Rob

[Chris Peterson]

It will be interesting to see what other experts have to say when the additional comments are posted. I think I have a good idea what the primary consensus will be: that the conclusions reached in this paper are completely wrong.

While Hoover is a respected scientist with a valuable body of work, he has long been obsessed with finding fossils in meteorites; he has made such claims before, and they have been pretty effectively shot down. Depending primarily on comparative morphology is not a very reliable approach to identifying fossils of microorganisms: nature has a way of creating structures that look like organisms, but are not. In this case, we are almost certainly seeing amorphous sulfate filaments. The images support that conclusion, as do the x-ray dispersion analyses. While Hoover makes a claim for "biomarkers" whose natural synthesis can't be explained, I predict other experts will have a different opinion on that matter.

As always, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I don't see that in this paper at all.

[bystander]

Does The Journal of Cosmology have an axe to grind?

Journal of Cosmology Going Out with Big Bang
David Dobbs's Somatic Marker | 2011 Feb 13

from a press release from JOC

Journal of Cosmology To Stop Publishing--Killed by Thieves and Crooks

JOC will publish its last edition in May of 2011.

The Journal of Cosmology (JOC) was founded in the summer of 2009, published its first edition in October, and immediately became a success. Within one year it was receiving nearly 1 million hits a month and dozens of news articles were appearing regularly about its content--a phenomenal achievement for a scientific journal.

Naturally, JOC's success posed a direct threat to traditional subscription based science periodicals, such as "science" magazine; just as online news killed many newspapers. Not surprisingly, JOC was targeted by science magazine and others who engaged in illegal, criminal, anti-competitive acts to prevent JOC from distributing news about its online editions and books.
...

It gets worse. What do you think, do they have an axe to grind? They seem to think they do, but back on topic, some interesting op-eds:

Has life been found in a meteorite?
Discover Blogs | Bad Astronomy | 2011 Mar 05

Has Evidence for Alien Life Been Found?
Discovery Space News | Ian O'Neill | 2011 Mar 05

Aliens Riding Meteorites: Arsenic Redux or Something New?
Wired Science | Neuron Culture | David Dobbs | 2011 Mar 06

[makc]

more to come:

In this final [May] edition, evidence will be presented, demonstrating that life on Earth has a genetic pedigree extending backwards in time by over 10 billion years (billions of years before Earth was formed). We have the evidence. Its in our genes.

doesn't it indeed make sense, I mean creationists always try to argue that 4 billions years were not enough for life to form, and - here you go - these guys give you extra billions all the way down to big bang. could be useful if true.

[makc]

loved this quote:

[JOC] isn't a real science journal at all, but is the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth. It doesn't exist in print, consists entirely of a crude and ugly website that looks like it was sucked through a wormhole from the 1990s, and publishes lots of empty noise with no substantial editorial restraint. For a while, it seemed to be entirely the domain of a crackpot named Rhawn Joseph who called himself the emeritus professor of something mysteriously called the Brain Research Laboratory, based in the general neighborhood of Northern California (seriously, that was the address: "Northern California"), and self-published all of his pseudo-scientific "publications" on this web site.

[bystander]

NASA Statement on Astrobiology Paper by Richard Hoover
SpaceRef.com | 2011 Mar 07

NASA is a scientific and technical agency committed to a culture of openness with the media and public. While we value the free exchange of ideas, data, and information as part of scientific and technical inquiry, NASA cannot stand behind or support a scientific claim unless it has been peer-reviewed or thoroughly examined by other qualified experts. This paper was submitted in 2007 to the International Journal of Astrobiology. However, the peer review process was not completed for that submission. NASA also was unaware of the recent submission of the paper to the Journal of Cosmology or of the paper's subsequent publication. Additional questions should be directed to the author of the paper.

Dr. Paul Hertz, chief scientist of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington

Source: NASA HQ

Followup thoughts on the meteorite fossils claim
Discover Blogs | Bad Astronomy | 2011 Mar 07

1. The Conclusion (for now) ...
2. When I read the paper, my first reaction was pretty strongly of the "Not buyin’ it" variety. The science seemed shaky, and Hoover’s techniques doubtful, but my lack of expertise prevented me from drawing strong conclusions. However, experts in the field of micro- and astrobiology are starting to weigh in, and clearly think the claims of ET life are bogus.
3. The method of publication is decidedly odd, avoiding the big, reputable journals and instead going with a journal that has published clearly inaccurate articles in the past. I consider this very suspicious but not necessarily evidence the research is wrong.
4. The method of publicizing is also decidedly odd, avoiding going through NASA channels to issue a press release and instead approaching one news venue directly. Again, as in (2), this is suspicious but not conclusive for or against the results.
5. Publicly asking for other scientists’ opinions was shrewd, but given the opinions I’m seeing from them so far it’s likely to backfire. Hard. But the media won’t cover that as much as the original announcement — it’s not as sexy, frankly — so it’s unlikely to make much of a difference there. It’s up to blogs and other venues to make sure people get the actual, scientific, and skeptical viewpoint out.
6. Bottom line: given what scientists are saying now, together with my initial reactions and further thought, it’s my personal opinion that Hoover’s claims are wrong. There are way, way too many red flags here. As a scientist and a skeptic I have to leave some room, no matter how small, for the idea that this might be correct. But that room is tiny indeed, and it looks to me that the search for life beyond Earth will continue, and in time will eventually produce scientifically rigorous results.
   
   But that time is not yet here.

[neufer]

The 42nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC)
The Planetary Society Blog By Emily Lakdawalla Mar. 7, 2011

<<John Moores attended the LPSC (Lunar and Planetary Science Conference) opening reception last night (about which Luke Dones remarked "I haven't seen a crowd like this since I went to see The Who."). John reported on his blog that " Something's in the air here in the Woodlands, and it's not pleasant." The talk of the night was details that had been leaked from the NASA Planetary Decadal Survey, details that made the scientists at LPSC "nervous and unsettled." If what the Space News story says is true, the Decadal Survey recommendations will "thrust a dagger into the heart of flagship missions."

Since I've gotten some questions about it, I will add that the "cyanobacteria in meteorites" paper that's been getting some Internet buzz was also a general topic of discussion. Science journalist Richard Kerr remarked that there is "general distress and disgust here at LPSC over Hoover's meteorite microfossils. [And] one half-serious suggestion of burning him in effigy."

The politics are scary, but today's science is still exciting. This morning's oral sessions were about the Martian cryosphere (that is, the layer of ice that exists below the surface, analagous to Earth's groundwater); studies of the isotopic composition of the most ancient materials in the solar system; discoveries and telescopic studies of asteroids, including the latest results from WISE; and the way atmospheres are built from volcanic gases. In the afternoon, there's a session previewing MESSENGER's mission at Mercury (orbital insertion is in 10 days!); one on achondrite meteorites; one on asteroid geophysics; and one on the formation of our Moon.>>

[makc]

This paper was submitted in 2007 to the International Journal of Astrobiology. However, the peer review process was not completed for that submission.

NASA messed up, it was different paper. But so far I haven't seen any positive commentary

[neufer]

Alien Life in Meteorites: 'Remarkable Achievement' or 'Garbage'?
Published March 07, 2011

Riccardo Guerrero / Richard B. Hoover / Journal of Cosmology A photograph taken through a scanning electron microscope of a CI1 meteorite (right) is similar in size and overall structure to the giant bacterium Titanospirillum velox (left), an organism found here on planet Earth, a NASA scientist said.

---

<<A NASA scientist announced a shocking find Friday, claiming a rare meteorite holds the fossilized evidence of alien life. But is the work a "remarkable achievement," as one scientist put it? Or in the words of another, simply "garbage"?

Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, is convinced that he has found fossils within an extremely rare class of meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. He published his latest findings in the March edition of the online Journal of Cosmology -- research that suggests we are not alone in the universe, he told FoxNews.com. “I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet Earth,” Hoover said. “This field of study has just barely been touched -- because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible.”

Expecting controversy, the journal issued personal invitations to 100 scientists asking them to weigh in on the finding. Now the journal itself has become the source of controversy. On Monday, a NASA statement by Paul Hertz, chief scientist in the science division, said Hoover failed to advise the agency he had submitted the paper to the Journal of Cosmology -- and that the article failed to get published in a more established peer-reviewed journal.

Others point to a history of "out there" science stories, and note that the Journal's website is amateurish. Blogger and University of Minnesota-Morris biologist P.Z. Myers called it "the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics." "This work is garbage," he said. "I'm surprised anyone is granting it any credibility at all."

Editor Lana Tao recently fought back, calling such comments "tantamount to school-yard taunts by jealous children." "The ad hominem attacks and complaints by those [that] say Dr. Hoover's article should have been published in these other periodicals, and not JOC, are just sour grapes and should not be taken seriously," she Tao said.

The Journal published early Monday morning 12 responses, said Dr. Rudy Schild, a scientist with the Harvard-Smithsonian's Center for Astrophysics and Cosmology's editor-in-chief. He claimed that "no commentary has pointed out any major flaws in the data." Many scientists have indeed voiced concerns, however, just not to the Journal itself -- despite the open call for discussion.

David Morrison, senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute at Ames Research Center, told MSNBC he felt the choice of scientific journal was enough to call the report into question. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. At a bare minimum this would require publication in a prestigious peer-refereed scientific journal -- which this is not." "Perhaps the publication came out too soon; more appropriate would have been on April 1," Morrison added. The commentary posted to the Journal of Cosmology's site is more measured. It tends to be enthusiastic and open-minded, often suggesting other interpretations and calling for additional work to verify Hoover's findings:>>

[bystander]

"Perhaps the publication came out too soon; more appropriate would have been on April 1," [David] Morrison added