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December 9th, 2010 | Category: biologyYou’ve got to be kidding me – Robert Sheldon, Uncommon Descent blogger and rocket physicist, has come out with a post on The Procrustean, his personal conservative political blog, defending the arsenic-metabolising GFAJ-1 paper. It truly is a perfect storm of ID proponent meets terrible scientific methodology.
The scientific backlash against the recent NASA-funded paper, which claims that a strain of Halomonadaceae bacteria called GFAJ-1 can metabolise arsenic as a substitute for phosphorus, has been swift and punishing, as anyone involved with the [...]
» Continue reading “Robert Sheldon, ID proponent, defending the arsenic bacteria paper? Oh dear God.”
December 6th, 2010 | Category: biologyRemember the amazing arsenic-metabolising Halomonadaceae, GFAJ-1? Of course you do, it was everywhere in the news only a few days ago. Well, it turns out the basic conclusion of the Science paper, that the bacteria were using arsenic metabolically instead of phosphorus, is highly questionable based on the data Felisa Wolfe-Simon et al. collected. Why do I say that? Rosie Redfield, a microbiologist in British Columbia, has written a critical review of the paper from a microbiology perspective, revealing a stunning lack of evidence that arsenic was even [...]
» Continue reading “When life gives you questionable data, make sensational claims, non-thorough NASA!”
December 3rd, 2010 | Category: biologyNASA has found extra-terrestrial life living right here on planet Earth! Oh my God!
…or not. You see, mainstream science journalism today is rather binary – either a new discovery gets hyped to the extreme or it barely gets mentioned at all. Clearly, Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her fellow researchers decided to follow the former path, and a few days ago NASA published a press release entitled “NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery; Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2″. To say that [...]
» Continue reading “When life gives you arsenic, make arsenate-backboned DNA, non-alien Halomonadaceae!”
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Homologous Legs is the personal blog of Jack Scanlan, an Australian science communicator and biology student.
Topics of interest here include the intelligent design/evolution "war", biology, philosophy, religion, music, and mostly coherent thoughts from a scattered brain. Contact
homologouslegs(at)gmail(dot)com
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