

Russians now say new Antarctica bacteria actually contamination - 8ig8
http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/11/17272571-russians-now-say-new-antarctica-bacteria-actually-contamination

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tokenadult
From the article:

"The quick backtrack illustrates the danger of bypassing peer review when
announcing new results, Peter Doran, an Arctic and Antarctic researcher at the
University of Illinois at Chicago, told OurAmazingPlanet.

. . . .

"'You can say anything you want in a press release,' Doran said. 'The peer
review literature (by contrast) is very controlled. It needs to be
substantiated, and written in clear language.'"

Yep. That's the problem. There is a well known science news cycle

<http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174>

in which a researcher announces a preliminary result, but as a press release
is compiled, the result is hyped up. Then credulous journalists who don't know
much about science hype it some more.

My all-time favorite link to share in any Hacker News discussion of a
speculative research finding like those posted here in the last few days is
the article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" by Peter
Norvig, director of research at Google, on how to interpret scientific
research.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

Check each submission to Hacker News you read for how many of the important
issues in interpreting research are NOT discussed in the submission.

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DIVx0
What does this mean for any future findings from this effort? For the purpose
of examining ancient lifeforms in this lake; is the lake now considered
contaminated by surface organisms?

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sergiotapia
Kind of bummed out over this news to be honest. Well, we still have deep sea
exploration - I'm sure there's something down there that we haven't found yet.

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lttlrck
And "previously unknown" contamination at that. That team has just lost a lot
of credibility.

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seanmcdirmid
Not really. There was no fraud going on and they double checked their results
as they were supposed to. Their only sin maybe here was having over zealous
PR.

The Internet these days makes potential findings hard to keep secret as well
as easy to disseminate and misinterpret.

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OGinparadise
Lesson learned: before buying any "AIDS cured" or "New DNA found on earth" we
need to chill and wait for the hype to settle.

