One test showed that the soil would react with the nutrients. The other tests failed to find any sort of life or organic material.

Do you say the other tests were all wrong - or that infact the LR test simply showed chemistry. Which is more wrong - ignoring 2 other experiments, or attributing one to chemistry which has infact been replicated on earth? Citing only one source - a source on Levin's site - is neither balanced nor relflective of scientific opinion.

"To this date, no experiment has duplicated or realistically approximated the Mars LR positive and control results except when using living microorganisms. "
30 seconds with google finds this to be untrue.


http://www.springerlink.com/content/j534gg7847x37756/
" A major argument in the claim that life had been discovered during the Viking mission to Mars is that the results obtained in the Labeled Release (LR) experiment are analogous to those observed with terrestrial microorganisms. This assertion is critically examined and found to be implausible."

http://www.springerlink.com/content/j511j72749751pjx/
"When exposed to water vapor, the peroxide-modified titanium dioxide samples release O2 in a manner similar to the release seen in the Viking gas exchange experiment (GEx)."

The conclusions of this most recent paper are fundamentally flawed and show a complete and utter lack of effort to understand Pancam, the location and orientation of the rover or indeed the actual image itself which DOES show detail within the regions discussed. It's beyond belief that a scientific magazine has considered it newsworthy.

Doug