 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Last December, NASA had a press conference in which they claimed that they had found some interesting evidence to show that extraterrestrial life was possible. What they finally came out with was really an arsenic-eating bug in Lake Mono. The question is, did NASA really hype this thing up to support or gather more public support? Even though the science of what was being discussed is still very important, the fact that arsenic could substitute for one of the building blocks phosphorus in the DNA chain. It's an important result by itself, but the hype that NASA seems to have put on it wasn't justified by what the results were finally shown. Of course, the scientists have come out very strongly in large numbers saying that this is an extraordinary claim that you have a DNA minus phosphorus substituted by arsenic and it does not have enough supporting evidence to give for such an extraordinary claim. In fact, the evidence could be quite regarded as quite ordinary or even shoddy. This has been a controversy in the scientific circles. It's now eight comments on this has been printed in science. The original paper had come out in science and of course the authors have defended themselves. This has become a huge controversy. To discuss this issue and also certain other issues, how self-correcting is science, we have today with us Dr. Satyajit Rat from National Institute of Immunology. Satyajit, good to have you back with us. Thank you. Let's look at the basic scientific claim being made that you can substitute arsenic for phosphorus in the DNA which was thought to really hold the DNA scaffold up part of that also participates in other very important cell functions. How substantive is this claim that is being made and what is its current status? There isn't a simple answer despite the fact that we apparently have a paper published in a very high profile journal that seems to suggest that there is an answer. Yet there isn't when you look at the data an answer to this question. Why am I saying this? I am saying this because the paper shows data that make it possible that there is arsenic associated with the DNA of this bacterium. But arsenic being associated with the DNA of this bacterium and arsenic being incorporated into the structure of this DNA of this bacterium are two entirely different kettles of fish all said and done. If you take a child and you let the child play outdoors the child will come back covered with mud. The mud is associated with the child but that doesn't mean that the mud is an intrinsic has become an intrinsic part of the child's body structure. In other words you can always wash the mud off presumably. And really the paper has amongst its many other limitations this limitation that the nature of the incorporation of arsenic into the DNA structure has not been clearly demonstrated. As a matter of fact many of the comments in science that are critical of this paper and that science has published address this particular question. So the paper if you read gives you a completely different impression from the impression you would get if you read the hype around the paper. The hype around the paper, Felissa I think her name is Wolf Simon being on the cover of Glamour magazine being rated as one of the 100 most influential people, women, scientists something or the other by some advertising gimmick or another. All of this would create a completely different impression altogether. The paper itself is far more soberly written. The paper says the following things. They found a bacterium that originated in Monolake in California which is a high salt containing low nutrients including phosphorus containing lake. Then they have subjected sediment from this lake not even a bacterium from this lake sediment from this lake mud from this lake to high arsenic low phosphorus growth environments. And after many generations they have come up with a bacterium that seems to survive on exceedingly low levels of phosphorus and despite exceedingly high levels of arsenic. To the extent that the protein the fat and the DNA content of this bacterium seems to contain extraordinarily low amounts of phosphorus and seems to be associated with extraordinarily high amounts of arsenic. This is the sum and substance of the paper. The only additional point in the paper that is interesting is that if you take away the arsenic in the growth environment of this bacterium, the bacterium stops growing. They have been using this as an argument to say that the bacterium uses arsenic. But it is equally possible that the presence of arsenic allows the bacterium to use phosphorus more efficiently. This very small amounts of phosphorus that are present in the growth environment may be used more efficiently by the bacterium in the presence of high levels of arsenic. There are other bacteria which in fact do something very similar so it is quite plausible. This evidence has been used for two separate things. One to publish a very high profile journal paper and two for NASA to call a press advisory to issue a press advisory saying that it is possible that life is far more plastic than we had thought it is. Certainly life is pretty plastic. We know that already. Whether it is as plastic as this or not the jury is still out. NASA in fact almost made it out that they have a made a new discovery which in fact could even support the idea there are two origins of life on earth a as if there is this is an independent origin of life. In fact talked of even shadow biospheres and so on. This was really something not warranted by what the paper was saying. Let's get something clear. There is no claim in the paper nor is there any indication in the data that this bacterium is an independently derived form of life for two reasons amongst many two major reasons amongst many. One that it is actually derived from sediment by putting that sediment in an experiment reminiscent of Louis Pasteur putting that sediment into growth environments containing progressively more and more arsenic. Clearly this is adapting an original bacterium to very high levels of arsenic which is not at all indicative of an independent arsenic dependent origin. Secondly you take this bacterium and you give it instead of arsenic you give it phosphorus and it grows much better in the paper itself than it grows an arsenic. So clearly this is not a bacterium that can't use phosphorus that uses arsenic instead. So therefore the independent origin of life is simply out of the room there is there is no way to suggest that for anybody including NASA including the authors to be suggesting that is simply being carried away either out of sheer excitement or perhaps more calculated motives with the hype. You know if we really look at it this is currently this is also becoming obvious that if there is a high profile claim in science then this will and you are going to hype it up in public domain. The media was called the way this NASA had framed its press conference it appeared they have almost discovered extraterrestrial life form so if you hype it in this way obviously the peer discussion will also take place in public domain. The authors at one point said we don't really respond to blogosphere and so on but they're quite happy to for instance Felicia Wolf-Simon went to TED lecture and she made various claims and you have quoted the Glamour magazine they don't seem to have so much problems about responding to the public domain as much to public criticism in the blogosphere or other modes of criticism by the scientific community itself. All right so this I will say in support of the authors the authors have done everything that you can expect scientists to do when a controversy arises. Number one they have responded formally to the technical criticisms of their work that have been conveyed to them by the journal in which they were attempting to publish the paper. They have responded at length with some they have taken an honest difference of opinion as they stand with some criticisms they have actually said that this is preliminary work we acknowledge that if this were to turn out to be correct as a reservation our claims would not stand scrutiny we will wait and see we are working on this. Secondly they have actually made this bacterium available to other workers in other words they have not sat on this bacterium and said we have a bacterium and we are not going to give it to anybody but this is what we have discovered in the best traditions of science they have made this bacterium available. Now the bacterium grows slowly there are small amounts they are a small lab there have been problems but they have certainly given the bacterium to more than one independently working group for validation eventually I'm sure we will hear. Let me add a point about NASA's hype you know I can sort of understand where they are coming from all said and done this is a lab that is in the process of disassembly. Felicia Wolf-Simon herself does not have a permanent position in this laboratory the laboratory does not do this kind of work as their primary work in fact the senior author of the laboratory is from the U.S. Geological Survey. NASA's just had its shuttle program shut down the shuttle made its last flight a few days ago in general basic science funding agencies not simply in the United States but all over the world are feeling pressured by the neoliberal view of science which is that science is done to gain something preferably for companies to make in this atmosphere it's not surprising I'm not suggesting that one should be doing this oneself but it's understandable if science agencies that do basic science that does not have any immediate implication in the corporate world tend to resort to gimmickry to drum up a little bit of support for their bottom line budgets. Well in this sense what you are saying today we are seeing increasingly science really turned to as much to popular media as to scientific journals and in fact it's clear that if you do have a high public profile then funds grants all this seem to become a little easier so effectively we are seeing a certain kind of science taking place today how science is being done how science is being communicated which is changing absolutely it's certainly changing what's interesting in this case is that it's not the individual scientist themselves who initiated the hype one is expecting individual scientists to hype their findings all said and done you know I don't go out and say that my baby is the ugliest thing in the universe but that it was NASA the institutional agency which attempted to do this and that I think reflects the levels of institutional anxiety about basic science funding I repeat myself not simply in the United States but globally the other interesting thing about this that we might want to keep in mind what does it take to publish a paper in science becomes an operative issue for scientists rather than saying what does it take for me to change a prevailing dog mind science to change a prevailing concept a prevailing theory in science and that shift from trying to decide how much weight of evidence I need to put together to change a theory in the minds of my fellow scientists versus how much evidence does it take to publish a paper in a high-profile journal I'm not sure that that's a desirable change in shift that's a change that has occurred quite radically over the past 50 years suddenly and we have seen it steadily marching onwards in a certain sense it's a corporate culture acclimatization of how science is done more the ad world if you will coming back to a certain point which has now been made in fact by Carl Zimmer in the New York Times article that he says that the prevailing view of science is self-correcting but no leading scientist is going to do a study to replicate what has been done by Felicia, Paul Simon and her group because it does not have any mileage the replication studies are not really something which give you academic brownie points students who want to do it would like their career so if the prevailing view is that this science was shorty science as it seems to be that there's really no replication studies that is likely to be done and also if negative findings are there no general publishing therefore science in that sense does not invest in this way or the negative findings gives much more value to positive findings in this way in in fact can perpetuate mistakes and actually create a hell of a lot of waste as a general formulation I think you're perfectly right however in a curious twist in this particular case that formulation may not quite apply and let me explain why I'm saying that in the first place I would not like to leave the impression that I think that this that the paper that was actually published the data the text the interpretations the conclusions in that paper were shorty science I think that there were a limited set of findings that were discussed with appropriate caveats but then as Simon has said will Simon has said that arsenic replaced phosphorus in the DNA chain that's really a claim that she's been making and her co-authors have been making I understand but I am talking about the published paper for scientists it's the published paper that counts or at least is supposed to count whether it in reality does so or not is a whole different can of worms but something she was at the press conference where it was said publicly arsenic is replaced but in their paper they do not say this and in that sense I'm making the limited point that the paper is not shorty science remember we do not hold the science that scientists do as being as reprehensible as the scientists themselves quite frequently we have many examples of people who are quite terrible people this is not to suggest that full Simon is a terrible person but we have many examples of people who are terrible people who have done outstanding science and have received Nobel Prizes and other such hyper generating devices in their lives the paper makes modest conclusions but because it was a hyped paper in fact replication is going to be done and is going to have publication value now that's because there was hype to the paper if it had been published in current science your formulation would apply certainly there would be no replication nobody would notice it would die without a ripple yet a modest set of data because they are published in a high-profile journal have actually invited the triggering of a self-correction process in science that we would only hope is always present and what I'm trying to say is that it's not always present that the terrain for the triggering of self-correction processes in science is deeply unequal in fact a lot of the dead ends in science and not really known because the authors researchers who came across the dead ends after publishing say five or six papers they would stop publishing that a whole lot of people in India for instance would not know why they have stopped would continue down that path so that's that part of Zebra's argument that self-correction in science is hampered by the fact journals don't publish replication studies and rarely publish negative findings would still hold good it holds good completely and it holds good particularly in the world of the natural and clinical sciences and what I mean by that is biology and medicine because in biology and medicine a little more strongly than for other disciplines such as chemistry or even more physics or mathematics there is a hierarchy of journals so journals compete with each other to be high on the public perception totem pole scientists why with each other to publish in those journals that are high profile this has come to be over particularly over the past two decades a sort of gamed system in which journals and scientists are mutual beneficiaries of a system that creates clicks and networks that perpetuate themselves as mandarins in such a situation because the science that you do needs to acquire this high profile you would prefer to have positive data rather than negative because you are a journal that aspires to be high profile you would prefer to publish positive data rather than negative and so the vicious cycle continues and that vicious cycle I think therefore has become a far more prominent feature of the life sciences and medicine research field than it has for example of the physics and mathematics community. Thanks Satyajit I think we have gone over this various facets of this issue with the jury as you said is still out on the quality of the research that has been done particularly I think the arsenic substitution which has been claimed though you say it's not been claimed in the paper but certainly has been claimed all over the place I think is something which is really open to serious question so I think we'll come back and have a discussion after hopefully the replication studies or negative findings have come out. Thanks. Thank you.