by If you buy links to our articles, the future and its syndicate partners can earn a commission.
In the withdrawn newspaper it was claimed that the Lake California had been discovered in Arsen based. | Credit: NASA
The controversial assertion of microbes, which have arsenic in their biochemistry rather than phosphorus, was withdrawn 15 years after its creation by the magazine Science – although most in the research community are satisfied with the decision, the withdrawal of the authors of the original study has angered.
As we know from its use as a poison, arsenic is a toxic substance. Therefore, as we know, life would of course not include arsenic in his biochemistry. But because the search for foreign life according to their definition is a search for life as we do Don”T You know that astrobiologists consider the possibility of organisms that have a different biochemistry than the one we are familiar with.
In fact, this led to the NASA and with a large raid, which held a press conference in 2010, which explained the alleged discovery of the microbial life on arsenic on the basis of arsenic in the mono lake, a heavily salty water in California.
NASA claimed that this discovery would change the search for life beyond the earth forever.
Chemical details of life
Remember that the whole life as we know, including human life, only uses six key elements in its biochemistry: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen and sulfur.
Take phosphorus as an example. In our biochemistry, phosphorus in the form of phosphate is of crucial importance for the formation of the sugar phosphate backbone of RNA and DNA molecules as well as the storage and provision of metabolic energy by adenosintriphosphate (ATP).
However, astronomical observations indicate that phosphorus may not be evenly distributed in the milky way. And it was found that life in this phosphorus was able to survive regions of space by replacing phosphorus through another element like arsenic. It was this possibility that 15 years ago a team was led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon from the Astrobiology Institute of NASA according to a possible life on arsenic life in the extreme alkaline conditions within the mono lake.
In this press conference in 2010, the discovery team revealed that it had found it in the form of a bacterium that is known as the GFAJ-1, which was allegedly present in phosphorus-free samples from Lake Mono. The discovery was celebrated as a revolutionary development in astrobiology for all about five minutes.
Despite all the Hullaballoo of the press conference, when Wolfe – Simon and the work of her team were published online by the magazine Science, other biochemists quickly came out to argue that there were serious defects in research. In particular, they argued that the expression of phosphorus against arsenic would cause the DNA to dissolve in a second if they are exposed to water. Damn was the critics’ claim that the rehearsals used by Wolfe – Simon’s team were contaminated by phosphorus from the lake. Life in these rehearsals, the critics argued, probably only used the phosphorus in these rehearsals.
When Science published the research paper in printed form a year later, it was attached by eight technical comments from other researchers who tried to find the results and two additional papers from independent teams who tried to replicate the results, but no evidence of life in arsenic in Mono Lake. Wolfe – Simon and her colleague also published an answer to the criticisms in which she wrote that “we say that our interpretation of AS [arsenic] The substitution based on several congruent evidence is viable. “
Not many people believed them, and Wolfe-Simon’s team has never published the results of follow-up experiments who try to address some of the points in criticism. They also refused to react to other criticism than by the medium of letters inspected by experts. The setback against Wolfe – Simon’s team was violent and sometimes unsightly, with some abusive comments being shaped directly to Wolfe – Simon, who was still a young researcher. As a result, Wolfe -Simon decided to leave active research.
Now, 15 years later, the editor -in -chief of Science, Holden Thorp, and the Executive Editor of the Journal, Valda Vinson, have reopened the can worms by deciding to withdraw the paper. Why did it take so long to do this?
“Science did not withdraw the paper in 2012, since the editor -in -chief was aware of the recovery of data manipulation or the authors at that time to provide information about questions about publication,” wrote the editors of Science in their official retreat. “Our decision was then based on the editors’ view that there was no deliberate fraud or misconduct by the authors. We keep this view, but the standards of science to withdraw papers have expanded. If the editors find that the registered experiments of a paper do not support their most important conclusions, even if no fraud or manipulations occurred.”
The transmission electron microscopic shows a tribe of the bacterium called GFAJ-1, which the researchers can claim to include arsenic into its DNA and other vital molecules instead of the usual phosphorus into its DNA and other important molecules. | Credit: science/aaas
The other side of the story
Traditionally, the papers were only withdrawn when evidence of fraud or misconduct came to light or when the authors of a paper were asked to withdraw, perhaps when new evidence refutes their results. However, the retreat guard’s website reports that science has withdrawn 20 articles from its various publications since 2019, mainly based on what believes in the magazine for innocent mistakes.
It is enough to say that Wolfe-Simon and their team members do not agree to the decision of science. In her answer, which was published in the interest of fairness together with the withdrawal by science, the team explained their disappointment.
“We do not support this withdrawal,” they wrote. “While our work can be written and discussed in more detail, we are as reported to the data. This data has been checked by experts, openly discussed in literature and stimulated productive research.”
In addition, the team argues that the decision -making process of science was incorrect and that it denies the guidelines of the committee for publication ethics or thus. In these guidelines it says that withdrawal is only justified if there are clear indications of larger mistakes, the production of data or counterfeits that damage the reliability of the results of a paper.
“When the editors of science go beyond cope, they explain that” standards for retreat papers have expanded “, the team wrote. “We do not agree with this standard, which goes beyond the integrity of research. Disputes about the conclusions of papers, including the way they are supported by the available evidence, are a normal part of the science process. Scientific understanding develops through this process, often unexpected, sometimes for decades.
Thorp and Vinson continued in a blog post on the Science website, where they were clearer for the reason for the reason for the reason and argued that Cope’s guidelines can withdraw the paper. “In view of the evidence that the results were based on contamination, science is of the opinion that the most important conclusion of the paper is based on incorrect data,” they said.
On the website of the retreat report reports that Wolfe – Simon’s team said that they were not informed that it was reported on the alleged contamination. In fact, they only heard this from a used source that had seen the blog post. Nevertheless, the contamination was number one until 2010 and was not a new or surprising accusation.
Thorp and Vinson ended their blog post with the words: “We hope that this decision will end the story.”
Related stories
– Bad news for foreign life? Earth size planets can be less common than we thought
-Do we actually find signs of extraterrestrial life on K2-18B? “We should expect some false alarms and this can be one.”
– Is the bar for scientific claims of foreign life higher?
It remains to be seen whether this will be the case. However, it is clear that both sides have to be learned serious lessons about how controversial results are presented and how to indicate and receive scientific criticism – Thorp and Vinson have pointed out that they were dependent on Wolfe -Simon and their team and their team. It also illuminates the subtleties of when and how papers should be withdrawn.
In recent years we have seen, as triggered in the atmosphere of the exoplanet K2-18b Phosphin claims in the atmosphere of Venus and dimethylsulfide, a potential bisignature, debate and argument. It is to be hoped that scientists in the research community can think of taking no disagreements in the debate about these and other alleged discoveries in the future.
