Comments on: Arsenic Death

By: Martyn

Martyn — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 13:19:08 +0000

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2810

By: The Scienceblogging Weekly (July 13th, 2012) | Home Pests

The Scienceblogging Weekly (July 13th, 2012) | Home Pests — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:00:36 +0000

[...] Arsenic Death by ChemBark [...]

By: wolfie

wolfie — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:37:50 +0000

DNA is much more than a three bit byte computer. It is quite certainly a semiconductor (so what ?). Ninety percent are junk, and are probably responsible for the real secrets of heredity between generations. Think of methylation patterns. Allegedly, they are inherited among rats from mother to son and change quite rapidly.

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 01:34:11 +0000

Carmen Drahl has a new article in C&EN featuring a wide array of quotes. Good stuff.

By: Exploring why NASA needed to believe in the arsenic-eating bacteria | Uncommon Descent

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 00:24:34 +0000

[...] Here’s Rosie Redfield on NASA’s ”cowardly responses.“ Also, “Arsenic bacteria”: Coffin, meet nails, and also Arsenic Death. [...]

By: Rhenium

Rhenium — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 17:16:27 +0000

I didn’t see the “may well regret some of their statements” part yesterday…
Maybe it could be followed up with “Fools! I’ll destroy you all!”

By: Notanastrobiologist

Notanastrobiologist — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 01:16:00 +0000

The authors of the new studies may regret some of their statements….which do not contradict the original studies.

#arseniclife has become an endurance test of inanity.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 01:06:34 +0000

Ash at The Curious Wavefunction has a post up about the latest round of papers. His previous post, written following news of the acceptance of Redfield's paper, was also excellent.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:57:56 +0000

I’ve edited the last paragraph to reflect the comment above.

I’m still thinking this whole embargo situation through. My original thought was that if you have an agreement with a journal that they will publish a paper and in return, you will respect any embargo on the paper, that it is somewhat unfair to expect to be able to talk about the work ahead of time. That was part of the agreement—one can easily argue that if you don’t like it, publish somewhere else (in a journal less concerned about these issues).

With that said, any embargo enforcement so strict that it would hinder the presentation of data at a professional meeting/conference really represents a disservice to the scientific community. Also, the open nature of Redfield’s investigation has been manifest since the beginning, and I can only assume the editors of the journal knew about it.

Fortunately, these points are moot. I am glad Science dropped the embargo such that this friction never became an issue.

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 20:48:39 +0000

Yeah, my apologies for the lack of precision. Rosie Redfield did not break the embargo; her plans to speak of the work before the Science/media embargo was set to be lifted effectively forced Science to move up the day the embargo was to be lifted. Redfield’s plans to discuss the results are completely consistent with how she has approached this study as a model for “open science”.

My main point is that Science does not look good here. They set an embargo for a story and then were pushed around and had to change it. Usually, journals are pretty effective at clamping down the flow of information with threats about scuttling a publication. Here, I think they were forced into a less common defensive posture.

Anyway, I’m on my phone. More thoughts tonight.