Rosie Redfield, a microbiologist and one of the first people to criticize the "arsenic life" paper last year, recently announced that she and several colleagues had attempted to replicate the original experiment, without success. The original paper claimed that bacteria found in California's Mono Lake could substitute arsenic for the phosphorous normally found in its DNA. Redfield's team found no evidence that that was happening. However, it's worth noting that Redfield's research hasn't yet been peer-reviewed, and there are still some key questions about methodology—both in the original experiments and in Redfield's follow up—that make it hard to call this an absolute refutation. (Via The Scientist)

  • GertaLives

    Frankly, I think this sort of public announcement is out of line. Rosie prides herself on being a thorn in the side of the dominant paradigm, and I think personalities like hers are great to have in any scientific community. But she’s also fond of strong, declarative statements based on limited data, and while these gain press, there are far more methodical and, well, scientific researchers out there who get little air time.

    I’m not saying the arsenic results are solid — they’re highly suspect, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the original conclusions fall apart. But Rosie shouldn’t be out there pushing this into the press before it’s peer reviewed, and this looks suspiciously like a ploy to give her work better odds at a big journal by hiding under the mantle of open science and then claiming bias if a top flight journal doesn’t accept the paper. She’s already gone on the record in response to others’ call for additional controls: “We’ve done our part. This is a clean demonstration, and I see no point in spending any more time on this.” Oh, well then, I guess that solves any reviewer concerns out of the gate, doesn’t it?

    Maybe the folks taking the time to do all the boring controls will get their day in Science or Nature after all…

    • EH

      This whole Elsevier thing has everybody confused.

  • mkultra

    This is a fascinating story, and some very interesting science with very interesting implications. I’m really glad to read about this kind of thing here.

    …all that said, is this kind of note showing the “sausage-making” aspect of science a little too much? What I mean is (and I think this debate comes up a lot in science journalism), we all agree that science is a process and not an event… the whole process of science, hypothesis, and testable theory is one that should lead us ever closer to a more perfect understanding of the universe and our place in it.

    But, it isn’t a straight line. Hypothesis are disproven. Theories are discarded when contradicted by reproducible results. That’s the way it should be. Though, it seems like it used to be that we wouldn’t hear about a theory like the “arsenic life” until it was published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal (which I believe is what happened). What about the refutation? Shouldn’t we wait to publicize that until it also has been through the peer review process?

    I’m not saying I know the answers, but I do think it’s an interesting question. Of course, the danger with any kind of over-publicized scientific announcement (esp ones that haven’t been peer-reviewed) is that when the inevitable retraction comes along, the general public loses confidence in the scientific process as a whole. Then we get situations like AGW, vaccines, and (for Juggalos at least) magnets. ;-)

    Anyway Maggie, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

    • penguinchris

      I think in big-profile cases like this within a field, there’s a desire to get things out as quickly as possible in order to keep the conversation going. If they’re at the point of publishing (even if it isn’t peer-reviewed yet) they’re going to be fairly confident in at least reporting on their conclusions.

      Science often tends to move fairly slowly, and when it’s a contentious issue scientists can be impatient and don’t want to hold back too much because they want to argue about it, just like everyone else :)

  • redfield

    Maggie’s info is a bit out of date (things are changing fast).  Yesterday we submitted our manuscript to Science for peer review and, we hope, eventual publication.  Today I submitted the (not yet peer-reviewed) manuscript to the public arXiv.org server, where it will be available for download starting tomorrow (Wednesday Feb. 1).  The manuscript includes all of the supplemental data, allowing readers to fully evaluate our results and conclusions.

    Readers can follow the story on my RRResearch.fieldofscience.com blog or on twitter (#arseniclife).

    Rosie Redfield