

Mars Viking Robots 'Found Life' - killnine
http://news.discovery.com/space/mars-life-viking-landers-discovery-120412.html

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mturmon
From <http://www.gillevin.com/> , the fourth co-author's site:

"Based on his sensitive radioisotope microbial detection method, Dr. Levin
proposed to NASA and was selected for the Viking Mission to Mars. He was
designated Experimenter of the Viking Labeled Release life detection
experiment which landed on Mars in 1976. The experiment got positive responses
at both Viking landing sites. However, a consensus did not accept his results
as proof of life. After years of study, in 1997 Dr. Levin concluded that the
experiment had, indeed, detected life on the red planet, and published his
conclusion. Subsequent findings of environmental conditions on Mars and
research on organisms found in extreme environments on Earth have been
consistent with his claim. Pursuing the life issue, Dr. Levin was a member of
the Scientific Instrument Team for NASA’s experiment on the ill-fated Russian
’96 Mars Mission. He has since developed, proposed and published on a Chiral
LR life detection experiment as a way to remove any doubt about the original
Mars LR results."

Somewhat removed from any idea of disinterested scholarship.

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jerf
This looks less like evidence that the Viking robots found life than evidence
that somebody figured out how to get their research topic in the news.

Using techniques this many steps removed from the raw data are irrelevant no
matter how clever they are, because there's just too many things that can go
wrong with no way to validate what the problem is, without going back and
collecting more data. We're not going to come to a consensus about something
as big as life on Mars on a result this meta.

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Tossrock
More accurate headline: "USC research team claims level of order found in
Viking data set is indicative of biological processes, rather than prevailing
consensus view which holds it was geological in nature."

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cgs1019
The inundation with links to other articles (inline and sliding in) makes this
site basically unreadable. It's impossible to concentrate! Really just
shameful for a purported science site...

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ceejayoz
* Maybe.

