I'm currently at the Goldschmidt Conference in Florence, where Dr. Steven Brenner gave a talk proposing that life on Earth may have come from Mars. This has led to some head-scratching and furrowing-of-brows. His primary evidence is the oxidation state of molybdenum (Mo). Why Mo? I have no idea. To be fair, though, I am not an astrobiologist.
I missed his talk because I was in a different session, but I've been enjoying listening to the commentary in the aftermath.
Here's the BBC article and here's the abstract that he submitted to the conference (in the right-hand column).
Two things that catch my eye from the abstract:
1. This is a single-author abstract. While not rare, those are uncommon, especially at a conference like this. For comparison, I'm a co-convener for a different session here at Goldschmidt and we received a total of 34 submitted abstracts-- only 4 of them are single-author. To very broadly generalize, single-authors in the geosciences tend to be either lone geniuses, people who don't play well with others, or people who have unsupported ideas (and can't get anyone else to sign off on them). Of course, sometimes it's just people that prefer to work alone and have the means (both financial and intellectual) to pull it off-- it's just exceedingly rare in the geosciences.
2. His affiliations-- both of them are companies that he founded after leaving academia. Both seem to be in the business of selling stuff (amusingly, his second affiliation has a glowingly positive Yelp review).
Neither of these, in and of themselves, mean that his conclusions are invalid-- but the whole situation is certainly unconventional. It's been less than 24 hours and the rumblings about his talk have already begun to fade, so either there's not much controversy there, or his argument isn't convincing enough to generate much controversy. I'll loiter around the water cooler tomorrow and see what I can overhear :)
I missed his talk because I was in a different session, but I've been enjoying listening to the commentary in the aftermath.
Here's the BBC article and here's the abstract that he submitted to the conference (in the right-hand column).
Two things that catch my eye from the abstract:
1. This is a single-author abstract. While not rare, those are uncommon, especially at a conference like this. For comparison, I'm a co-convener for a different session here at Goldschmidt and we received a total of 34 submitted abstracts-- only 4 of them are single-author. To very broadly generalize, single-authors in the geosciences tend to be either lone geniuses, people who don't play well with others, or people who have unsupported ideas (and can't get anyone else to sign off on them). Of course, sometimes it's just people that prefer to work alone and have the means (both financial and intellectual) to pull it off-- it's just exceedingly rare in the geosciences.
2. His affiliations-- both of them are companies that he founded after leaving academia. Both seem to be in the business of selling stuff (amusingly, his second affiliation has a glowingly positive Yelp review).
Neither of these, in and of themselves, mean that his conclusions are invalid-- but the whole situation is certainly unconventional. It's been less than 24 hours and the rumblings about his talk have already begun to fade, so either there's not much controversy there, or his argument isn't convincing enough to generate much controversy. I'll loiter around the water cooler tomorrow and see what I can overhear :)
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=264526&goto=newpost
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