Two weeks after the release of a major study about the possibility of arsenic-based life in California’s Mono Lake, a torrent of criticism in the blogosphere has turned a widely reported scientific triumph into a scientific football.
After remaining largely silent in response to the critiques — which came from respected scientists as well as ill-informed posters — the researchers, their NASA funders and the prestigious journal that published the article have promised to better explain the work and answer formal criticism.
But in the fast-changing world of the Internet, it was also clear that those involved are not really sure how to respond without compromising their scientific methods and values.
Speaking at a panel discussion at a San Francisco science conference convened to discuss the arsenic research and the online response, study co-author Ronald Oremland of the U.S. Geological Survey defended his silence as an integral part of the tried-and-true scientific research process.
“I was trained to go to the lab and conduct my experiments, to send them to journals if they merited that, and to hope that they made it past peer review,” he said.
He can respond to critics, he said, when they present scientific arguments and data.
He said that when people launch online attacks, he doesn’t know who is behind them.
“I don’t want to get involved in what can end up in a Jerry Springer situation, with people throwing chairs,” he said.
The research team also put out a series of answers to questions frequently asked about its work, and promised to respond by next month to more than 20 letters and e-mails sent to the magazine Science questioning the work.
The team announced as well that it would make samples of the microbes available to other scientists for their research.
