[meteorite-list] Mars life concerns

From: MexicoDoug_at_aol.com <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Jul 19 12:59:45 2005
Message-ID: <202.5e58c60.300e8b79_at_aol.com>

Mark Fr. wrote:
 
>There's also a non-zero probability that gravity will reverse,
>time will speed up suddenly, evolution will cease, and that
>monkeys will fly out of my butt.
 
Hi Mark, Now that was a vile (bile?) respone! Was it from a John Carrey
movie or an original?
 
I'll keep my reply short just responding to the "scientifically" reasonable
objections, as your branded horse sense-based arguments strike me as much
weaker that you realize.
 
1. What you seemed to be emphasizing in your first post was the probability
that the astronauts contaminated specifically the (apparently virgin) part of
the camera insulation during there journey back to earth.
2. A typical sneeze has, what, 50,000 diverse microbe individuals? A
typical human hand, how many, 100,000,000 diverse individuals (95% under the
fingernails)?
3. And now you would expect me to believe using "an iota of horse sense"
that all 100 organisms being identical are the result of a someone "sneezing on
a lab bench", adding that you are reasonably sure there were other microbes
there, too that went undetected and blame it on unknown errors and your view
of limitations in analysis? You could be right, of course, we'll never know.
 Because in the end you just have a series of assumptions you are making
regarding an analysis done by a technician before you were born, in which you
impose own pet biases as well.
4. You also agreed with my pirated statement from the NASA website pointing
out the apparent fact that none of the other rocks or camera parts were
contaminated (detected as such), but say this only further proves it was
contamination because it wasn't repeated? That is uncommon horse sense. My sense
tell me there would have been at least one more "false positive" setting off
bells and whistles in all those rocks that were handled in a similar manner by
the astronauts regarding the possibility of contamination.
5. I don't know why the positive result was specific to exactly one species
and 50-100 dormant individuals of this species -and only this species- were
detected and somehow subsequently cultured at the CDC. I do believe it is a
good argument against that random sneeze or astronaut sweat which targetted
the inner insulation. And if makes me speculate if that particular organism is
particularly hardy as a space traveller, under the selective pressures and
circumstances that could have been present. The good news is all is easily
testable.
 
It is interesting to note that as Ron mentioned a few NASA employee
objections, there is also a view from an analyst within the CDC: That the NASA post
flight handling at the Houston lab under Jaffe is the most likely point of
contamination, if contamination could have occurred. The plot thickens
aimlessly...
 
My problem here is not to acknowledge a possibility of post-contamination.
It is the confidence which you have in your exaggerated statements of
probability in trying to revise results you feel you know best due to your
training. There is a reason this remains an open controversy. Send those
contaminated monkeys back where they came from...
Se acab?
Doug
Received on Tue 19 Jul 2005 12:59:37 PM PDT