NASA's arsenic bacteria revisited

it's only been a month since the discovery was announced at USGS Menlo Park and it will take more time for the international scientific peer review process to come to a consensus.

so far we know that it looks like global warming is a fact.

so far we know that cell phone and cell tower radiation health risks are very minimal possibly non-existent.

so far we know that mercury amalgam fillings are a possible health risk.

The general public is WAY more stupid than you think. Not only do they not know the story is false, they haven't even heard the story in the first place. The American public is like 7 or 8 steps behind, not 2 or 3.

Ok. I know peer review takes a long time. I'm not trying to have a debate.

It seems like most people know about the initial discovery because it was reported widely by the general news media. My question remains unchanged. Does the same, generic person who paid attention to the original story know that the only consensus pertaining to this paper it that it probably should not have been published.

chem grad student wrote:

Ok. I know peer review takes a long time. I'm not trying to have a debate.

It seems like most people know about the initial discovery because it was reported widely by the general news media. My question remains unchanged. Does the same, generic person who paid attention to the original story know that the only consensus pertaining to this paper it that it probably should not have been published.

I don't think there was ever a similarly big story in the news on how it was debunked. I just remember hearing about it, thinking "hmm, that's interesting", then not hearing anything else about it since.

The arsenic/bacteria paper has not been debunked.

It is still under peer review.

Bush's lie about WMDs in Iraq trumps any recent debunking.

The "US REALLY Won the Vietnam War" has been debunked.

chem grad student wrote:

Ok. I know peer review takes a long time. I'm not trying to have a debate.

It seems like most people know about the initial discovery because it was reported widely by the general news media. My question remains unchanged. Does the same, generic person who paid attention to the original story know that the only consensus pertaining to this paper it that it probably should not have been published.

No, because normal people do not read science blogs and do not google things they find interesting. As was said, the debunking was not highly publicized because it hasn't been published yet. Even if it is published, the retraction of an exciting result is less exciting than the result itself and will probably be less publicized.

I sat next to a jeweler on my flight across the country yesterday who saw me working, found out I was a scientist, and asked me with a straight face if I could explain to him (because he works with gold a lot) whether it is possible to turn lead into gold, like alchemy that you hear about sometimes.

ppawee wrote:

I sat next to a jeweler on my flight across the country yesterday who saw me working, found out I was a scientist, and asked me with a straight face if I could explain to him (because he works with gold a lot) whether it is possible to turn lead into gold, like alchemy that you hear about sometimes.

But we can transmute lead into gold right? It would just be really really really expensive to do.