Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 110 posts

Re: RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid

#101

Post by craftsman »

coldtea wrote: post #98
craftsman wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finally, I know that "we found RNA building blocks and B3" on a meteorite is less likely that contamination, so the story seems fishy and premature. Since you rightly encourage everyone to question claims, I question this claim. How do you know this, specifically? In other words, we have a situation where a team has done a bunch of experiments, data collection, and analysis, and then published a paper claiming "we…

You can call it a prior (like in Bayesian probability) on the probability of such an announcement being right. Same, to give an obvious extreme example, as I'd be sceptical about an annoucencement that "We found the perpetual machine, there was a major flaw in thermodynamics laws, here are our numbers and results", even if they're world reknown experts in physics saying it, and I don't have access to their data, or t…

It's fine and quite legitimate to have a prior, as your example of a perpetual motion machine illustrates. Along with the prior it's also important to understand how typical cognitive biases can affect those priors. For example, you cite the "mere experience of other such announcements being repeatedly proven wrong" and "the probability of the team just being lax with their annoucement to get publicity and grants." These might be examples of availability bias. Clearly these things happen. The question is whether they actually happen with a frequency that would justify the statement:

> Finally, I know that "we found RNA building blocks and B3" on a meteorite is less likely that contamination, so the story seems fishy and premature.

Regardless of each of our own priors and biases, respectfully, you don't know this. You don't have evidence that shifts the probability in this direction. Or rather, you haven't presented any. You haven't pointed out a specific flaw in the experimental design, instrument design and operation, data collection and analysis. What you have done is state your strong prior suspicion that something is wrong. That's not knowledge, and it's nothing that anyone else could base their assessment upon. The statement is simply a statement of your prior, nothing else. It's not a material statement about the actual paper, its data, analysis, or its conclusion.

Re: RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid

#102

Post by craftsman »

coldtea wrote: post #100
craftsman wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. It's trivial to question. It's non-trivial to do the work required to show evidence for or against some proposition. What is at "the root behind a lot of issues we've seen socially" is the easy path of questioning something without actually being able to do the work required to back up one's claims or counterclaims. So I believe the reaction which you think of as "trust the experts / science" is actually "d…

> It's trivial to question. It's also trivial to accept though. And in a world where you can't (for time and effort constrains) check every announcement personally, and where expert proclamations aren't always correct so thay you can just take them as granted, there are still reasons to have an estimation (as a layman but even as a scientist) of something being true or not summarily.

The alternative I've suggested is rather different than the suggested alternatives of accepting results or taking them for granted. In another comment I said:

> I'd suggest reading every paper critically, realizing (as most people do) that the results are tentative, and either letting it go at that, or dig in and do the hard work to figure out what may be flawed in the work presented. Then work with the authors or publish a paper of one's own pointing out the flaw and the new resulting analysis.

Re: RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid

#103

Post by craftsman »

coldtea wrote: post #97
craftsman wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But merely been less confident (that they are) in their thoroughness and in their preclusion of contamination, is much easier to claim and be correct while doing so. But it's a trivial observation, and one that isn't actionable or testable. For the team to have designed and performed the instruments, experiments, data collection, and analysis to say "We're confident in our results and we have ruled out contaminatio…

> But it's a trivial observation, and one that isn't actionable or testable Yes. But if they make a bold claim that "contamination can be ruled out", it's worth it to say to folks ready to take them for their word that, "it's still a possibility", even if it's not a testable finding but a suggestion. Sure 'we can confidently say about every paper ever published that "I'm not so sure."'. But that doesn't mean we do sa…

> then you should have no opinion about the probability of it being true or not

Rather, I said when we read papers we should realize that results are tentative. It's fine to have some personal assessment of the probability, but it's not actionable by anyone, and communicating it doesn't assist in improving our collective assessment of what is going on in the world. I'd also suggest that we probably don't, in fact, "often need and should be able to make a summary assessment..."

Re: RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid

#104

Post by permo-w »

craftsman wrote: post #93
lumb63 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowadays, to a lot of folks, questioning isn’t the bedrock of science. “Trusting the experts/science” is. That’s the root behind a lot of issues we’ve seen socially, especially over the last few years.

Disagree. It's trivial to question. It's non-trivial to do the work required to show evidence for or against some proposition. What is at "the root behind a lot of issues we've seen socially" is the easy path of questioning something without actually being able to do the work required to back up one's claims or counterclaims. So I believe the reaction which you think of as "trust the experts / science" is actually "d…

I think the problem here isn’t the specifics, but the borderline-nasty beration of the commenter simply for questioning the result

yes, I agree, it would be better if they had a specific criticism of the methodology, but an appropriate response is simply to ask for such a thing, not to jump on them for questioning it at all, which is what happened here. do you see what I mean?

what happened:

>I think there could be contamination of the samples

>oh wow how adorable, what’s next from your big book of ideas, little one?

what would have been healthy:

>I think there could be contamination of the samples

>interesting. do you have a specific criticism of their methodology?

Re: RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid

#105

Post by aa-jv »

coldtea wrote: post #70
aa-jv wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I know better than scientists have time and again made mistakes, and claimed something with certainty, even though it was wrong, despite, you know "actually working with the data and not just reading about it on the Internet". I also know that scientists have a bias to show impressive results, and that even NASA among others, in a similar case was all too fast to jump to conclusions and make a whole show about their…

>Now how about some apologies for your tone?

Actually its your tone-policing that is so disruptive to the conversation - you seem to have issues with peoples' statements given confidently - but fortunately there have been many more responses to your rash argumentation than I care to give.

Re: RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid

#106

Post by MagicMoonlight »

Given infinite time you would expect any pool of materials to eventually wibble together into certain compounds. Those compounds will wibble infinitely until they create structures. Some of those structures will be able to wibble compounds together. Some of those structures will be an exact copy of the structure that made it. Those structures will then replicate.

Simple life seems inevitable. It’s the tiers above that are the hard part. We only have mitochondria because we ate them and forced them to reproduce inside of us. Without that we would probably have never got beyond the single cell level. There’s a lot of random developments that we could have missed and ended up as just slime on a rock for eternity.

Re: RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid

#107

Post by MagicMoonlight »

schappim wrote: post #5

This has gotta add weight to the Panspermia hypothesis. Panspermia is a hypothesis that suggests life on Earth may have originated from microorganisms or organic matter that traveled through space, potentially from other planets or moons in our solar system or even from other star systems.

That’s a cope, not an explanation. It’s like saying “God made the world”. It doesn’t answer the question because then the question is who made God.

If your theory relies on external creation on another planet or whatever, then it’s meaningless because how did life start there. If life could start there then it could have started here so why do we need your theory at all?

Re: RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid

#108

Post by MagicMoonlight »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #23
cft wrote: post #2

I wonder if this supports the RNA World life origin hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world , because Uracil doesn't occur in DNA.

It's my understanding that the RNA world hypothesis is pretty much widely accepted these days anyway. The open question is more how you get to the RNA world in the first place. The RNA hypothesis as such is more an hypothesis of what preceded life based on DNA and protein, and less so a theory of the origin of life from non-life per se. The two main camps today seem to be "metabolism first" with people like Nick Lane…

RNA is a structure capable of being both a store of data and a catalyst.

As RNA forms spontaneously with time, eventually you would end up with an RNA which can catalyse its own ingredients and replicate. As soon as you have one, it would replicate and take over the pool. Random changes would then lead to advancement.

Membranes also form spontaneously so the replicating RNA could find itself a bubble through random chance and live in it.

Re: RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid

#109

Post by jasonlotito »

lallysingh wrote: post #77
jasonlotito wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They didn't detect RNA which would be extraordinary. Correct, and they don't say that. They found an RNA compound. Uracil, one of the molecules that is found in RNA. Not sure of the purpose of this comment to regurgitate what's found in the article itself, which goes into greater detail.

Yeah, even the title here (now) is "RNA compound" not RNA.

It was when I posted my comment.

Re: RNA compound and vitamin B3 found in samples from near-Earth asteroid

#110

Post by CatWChainsaw »

coldtea wrote: post #69
fnordpiglet wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we are probably really good programmers, surprisingly enough these “scientists” seem to know how to do their job without our guidance: https://earth-planets-space.springeropen.com/articles/10.118...

They can also always be too confident in having done their job perfectly - and they can be that with or without our guidance.

I'd ask why techbro culture makes people like you so confident in areas outside your expertise, but I just answered my own question.
Post reply on HN