Looked around and didn't see this posted yet (although I probably just missed it)

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/0...eut/index.html

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

WOW for that information!

But...

Claim of Martian Life Called 'Bogus'

What a shame for a scientific man to call BOGUS the work of another profesionals. Painfull to read.

Ouch---the findings will be presented tomorrow.
The Rovers weren't set up to confirm or deny this hypothesis?

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*

According to the MER home page, the scientific instrument package on the rovers are:

While their mission is part of the broader Life on Mars experiment, their main job is finding and following water.

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

I disagree. It seemed to be a well reasoned statement. Quoting:

Norman Pace, a microbiologist at the University of Colorado, is skeptical of the new claims. "It sounds bogus to me," Pace told SPACE.com. "I don't consider the chemical results to be particularly credible in light of the hash conditions that Mars offers."

The fact is that there just isn't that much information available from the experiments. At most you can speculate. And that's what they're doing. Also from the article:

"If we assume these gases were produced during the breakdown of organic material together with hydrogen peroxide solution, we can calculate the masses needed to produce the volume of gas measured," Houtkooper explained.

Houtkooper and his colleague Dirk Schulze-Makuch from Washington State University speculate that an organism based on hydrogen peroxide and water could survive the harsh martian climate, in which temperatures rarely rise above freezing and can reach -238 degrees Fahrenheit (-150 degrees Celsius) at the poles. The hydrogen peroxide would act like antifreeze for the cell, preventing its insides from crystallizing due to the cold.

(Emphasis added). It seems likely that the popular press is making more out of a speculative argument than was intended.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Does bogus means fraudulent? If so, them's fightin' words.

Originally. Lately, it's taken on a bigger role, in the US at least: bad, misleading, ridculous, silly, useless, wrong.

Orion437, in the light of this usage, does it pain you to hear one scientist call another's work "wrong"?

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As implying a deliberate deception? No, I might say that an improperly written program produces "bogus results." That doesn't mean the writer (which might be me) deliberately wrote the program to produce bad results. Or I might say that (for example) the argument that the surface of the sun is solid iron based on some images is a "bogus conclusion." That is, I'm trying to say the process used to arrive at the conclusion wasn't a valid one. It doesn't require that the person arriving at the conclusion knows it was invalid.

I take his comment as an indication he thinks the argument is very wrong, as I do the solid iron sun argument.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

This is not exactly a shiny, new thought.

Washington State University News, 2007 January 8

===

BA Blog: Are Martians blonds?

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Not at all. There is a big difference between calling it "bogus" or "wrong".

They've been declaring that they've found "evidence that maybe there might have once been life that could have done this" for every soil sample they've taken. Until they find cell walls, or active chemical processes, or something concrete and direct it's speculative.

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http://amssolarempire.blogspot.com

Yes; and a leaf on my driveway is evidence that a bald eagle may have put it there.
That's been my question since the story broke... What do we need to do to use that minor piece of information and expand on it? What other chemicals, byproducts, tests, whatever are associated with H2O2 life?

The BA expresses my opinion:

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

You missed my point. There is not a big difference. You're focusing on the traditional: counterfeit meaning. To do so is... bogus.

(Edit: Upon a re-read, did I miss your point? When you said "not at all" did you mean that it no longer pains you to hear the work described as bogus -- because you now know that "bogus" can mean "wrong"? If so, I apologize for these details. Or, was your "not at all" an indication that your feeling hasn't changed? If so, continue on.)

Did you see the "hacker slang" entry lower on the page?

In American slang, bogus can just mean wrong. This hacker slang meaning moved into common slang in the 1980s:

Wiktionary: bogus

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Yes, I'm so used to the "bogus=wrong" definition that I was a bit surprised that this was brought up in the first place. I might use "bogus" to emphasize something is wrong, but before this thread, it wouldn't have occurred to me that some people would assume I was implying fakery just by using that word.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Planetary Society Weblog: Doug Ellison: Europlanet : Life's a bleach

Edit: I meant to add: Doug Ellison is djellison here. Yay, Doug!

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That's exactly what I suspected. As I said before -

It seems likely that the popular press is making more out of a speculative argument than was intended.

I liked this comment from here:

Ironically, despite the big-name media reporting on this event so widely - I see none of their journalists at Europlanet. Thanks to The Planetary Society - yours truly will actually be there.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Here if something is bogus it means it's good. Go figure...

3. False. “Your arguments are bogus.”

You are right. I guess i didn´t expect to see such slang language from a science man and maybe a "wrong" or "incorrect" "or "false" would be much more apropiatte. Nevermind.