In response to someone who wondered whether American scientists might be letting their imaginations run away with them about this spectacular new alien life find, Rob Sheldon offers “absolutely not”. Au contraire, the French were onto it and NASA dropped the ball. On why that happened, he says, NASA’s attitude is an example of
… “pathological science” and was extensively discussed by Irving Langmuir in 1953 and subsequent publications
I can assure you, nothing in Hoover’s [the discovering scientist’s] work comes within a mile or so of being pathological. Hoover has several gigabytes of pictures taken in every single CI meteorite he can get his hands on. The pictures have made him a sensation in the French Academy, the Belgian Academy and the Russian Academy. Experts in microbiology have examined the pictures and not only verified their biological identity, but asked how he obtained such clarity that exceeds what they can accomplish in the laboratory. (Freeze dry for a thousand years…) The only people that continue to shun him are the US and NASA. Ultimately it is ideology that prevent people from taking the pictures seriously, a prior commitment to “life only exists on Earth”. Some of those people are conservative Christians, some are dedicated Darwinists. I really don’t think it is a well-reasoned position, but still, there’ a lot of ideological opposition.
By the way, Fox News is offering updates, comments from relevant scientists, though as of ten minutes ago, I couldn’t yet find them. Keep checking back.
I suppose some Evolution Sunday clergy will now be preaching sermons about how to adjust to the fact that we now “know” how life got started purely by chance (abiogenesis). Our ID community’s rebbe, Moshe Averick, told me,
I don’t think it has any implications at all for abiogenesis. No one really has much of a clue how abiogenesis could have occured on earth, the best that could be said is that not only is life on earth inexplicable, but life elsewhere in the universe is also inexplicable.
Our George Hunter will doubtless comment shortly on his regular blog, but I overheard him say,
It is particularly interesting that this finding rubs just about everyone the wrong way. For evolutionists, this stretches their OOL [origin of life] fairy tales even beyond their own liberal limits. You need the warm little pond, or deep sea vents, lightning, etc. OOL taking place on a meteorite is simply too far out. As Shostak discussed in the story, it forces them actually to take seriously Crick’s notion that OOL is so unlikely it must have come from the cosmos. But how did it get onto these meteorites?
Ah, but George may be overlooking the sheer density of TV talk show hosts. They will convey the very message that the Darwinists knew better than to convey themselves. There is a pathology in modern media similar to what Sheldon observes for science.
As for Seth Shostak, whom Hunter mentions, he said,
Maybe life was seeded on earth – it developed on comets for example, and just landed here when these things were hitting the very early Earth,” Shostak speculated. “It would suggest, well, life didn’t really begin on the Earth, it began as the solar system was forming.”
Seth, Seth, do you have any idea what you are saying? Yes, we know that this will make your career, but it is not only science; it is – much more important these days – “science” – the preserve of tenured mediocrities, miked up bubbleheads, and Darwin’s broomstick. Have a care how you go, man!
Some wrote me wondering why the study wasn’t published in Science or Nature, and I think Sheldon explains that above.