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It's interesting to think of space rocks like asteroids in the manner of pollen, or pollination in how organic molecules spread around in the solar system. :D https://gardens.si.edu/gardens/pollinator-garden/why-what-wh... .
Not just the solar system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia
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I think what the other poster is trying to say is something like the following: There was a team / teams who planned the mission, designed and built the spacecraft and its systems & instruments, designed and performed tests on the samples, analyzed the data, and published a paper with some claims. The paper outlines their methods, test results, data, and conclusions. Now, is it okay to question anything in the paper?…
My claim wasn't that "the team(s) involved did not consider that contamination could occur before or after the sample was obtained and analyzed". I merely gave a trivial (even exhaustive!) enumeration of possible contamination cases that could still have happened (regardless of whether they are targeted against in their protocols), not some novel avenue for contamination that I claim to be "smarter than the scientist…
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 contamination" is substantive and is backed by data and actual experiments. For someone else to say, "I'm not so sure, I think it could have been contaminated," and then provide no actual argument or data on what could have gone wrong, is probably not a novel observation or comment. In addition, it's an easy thing to say (as you correctly point out) without putting oneself on the hook to show how or why.
Here's what I mean: we can confidently say about every paper ever published that "I'm not so sure." Here are the possible outcomes: (a) the paper stands the test of time, the result holds, and nobody remembers anyone who said "I'm not so sure," or (b) someone finds a flaw in the paper, works with the authors and they publish a retraction or revised paper, and then whoever said "I'm not so sure," can easily (as you say) point out how "they called it," all without doing any actual work.
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.
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if you want people to engage with you seriously, perhaps avoid such a condescending tone. ditching the sarcastic italics could be a good place to start the way it currently reads is less like curiosity and more like “ how dare you question the judgment of scientists ”, as if questioning results isn’t the absolute bedrock of science in the first place
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.
If a paper is published which claims that such-and-such drug shows effectiveness against shingles, it's easy and trivial to say, "Not so fast my friend" followed by any number of statements about Big Pharma, citing previous situations in which a claim was later shown to be false, etc. But while all of those things may, in fact, be true, they don't bring to bear any actual evidence that this particular drug study is flawed and exactly how.
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If your post was simply to say, "This paper could have flaws and its conclusions could be incorrect," then yes, almost all of us will agree with you. I'm not sure it's big news, however. I would guess most of us understand that scientific findings are contingent on future experiments and results. If your post was to point out a specific flaw, e.g., that the sample could have been pre- or post-contaminated, then it fa…
My post was clearly not pointing out flaws in this specific research. Not sure how you get that impression. I first replied to a comment implying that just because research is widely publicised it should be accepted at face value, with a counterexample. That was all. Then someone replied to that with the absurd implication I was somehow trying to denounce all of science based on that one example. I corrected them. Th…
> If your post was simply to say, "This paper could have flaws and its conclusions could be incorrect," then yes, almost all of us will agree with you. I'm not sure it's big news, however.
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If your post was simply to say, "This paper could have flaws and its conclusions could be incorrect," then yes, almost all of us will agree with you. I'm not sure it's big news, however. I would guess most of us understand that scientific findings are contingent on future experiments and results. If your post was to point out a specific flaw, e.g., that the sample could have been pre- or post-contaminated, then it fa…
> But no, there is not anything anyone can do with the critique Critique doesn't just exist to be actionable. It can also exist (as in this case) to remind of a possibility. Especially in this case, where the possibility is precluded. In fact that was the very intended. Pre/post contamination could still have happened, we can't just exclude it because "protocols were followed". Protocols have been followed in other c…
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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…
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 found RNA building blocks and B3", right? And now your claim is "no, you're wrong about that," but without any experiments, data collection, and analysis. So if you're going to make a claim, provide the details, data, and evidence that substantiates your claim.
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My claim wasn't that "the team(s) involved did not consider that contamination could occur before or after the sample was obtained and analyzed". I merely gave a trivial (even exhaustive!) enumeration of possible contamination cases that could still have happened (regardless of whether they are targeted against in their protocols), not some novel avenue for contamination that I claim to be "smarter than the scientist…
> 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…
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 say it for every paper ever published, or that we say it with equal weight.
The alternative is taking every research announcement at its word, and acting like it's true until it's taken down by another paper. And even then, why'd we trust the second paper refuting the first got it right?
In the end, it amounts to "if you didn't do the work or the review yourself, and din't find any specific actionable issue with it, then you should have no opinion about the probability of it being true or not".
Which is quite problematic. In the end, we often need and should be able to make a summary assessment of the possibility of a paper's conclusions being right or not (as based on our layman experience), even without working with the data, going through it with a fine comb or trying to replicate it, but based on a sense of probability of the conclusion, our knowledge of past assurances in similar statements being ultimately proven wrong, potential conflicts of interest, and so on.
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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…
> 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…
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 to the machine to try it myself - hell, even if I can't understand their formulas.
One would still have a prior in this case, based on a general understanding of the the world, and the possibility range where this falls.
You might have a more informed prior because you took more concrete information into account than mere experience of other such announcements being repeatedly proven wrong, the probability of RNA being found on a meteor sample, the probability of the team just being lax with their annoucement to get publicity and grants, and so on.
Or, I guess, you think that we should never do that, and we should either do the research ourselves, or wait until someone else does, and at any point, whatever they say as their conclusion, them being experts and having done the work and everything, should be the final word.
Which probably means that as you see it, it makes no sense, to have a belief on anything or its refutation as likely or unlikely, unless one has either replicated the study and checked the conclusions, or found specific actionable faults.
'''revealing that a wide range of organic compounds such as racemic non-protein type amino acids, alkylamines, carboxylic acids, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and nitrogen heterocyclic molecules are present in the aqueous or organic extracts'''
from the linked paper.
racemic mix refers to the equal amout of stereoisomers
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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…
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.