Bloody Vikings!

I’d come across a news item yesterday which irritated me — well, it’s not really new anyway, but I’ll explain.

In 1976, NASA’s Viking Project - an ambitious undertaking destined for Mars - made history when the Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers safely touched down on the Martian surface. They were the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and transmit pictures back to Earth. In addition to a wealth of imagery and data the probes returned, each lander carried identical biological experiments, designed to search for evidence of Martian life. [For an overview of these experiments, consult this resource at Malin Space Science Systems.] The Viking biology experiments discovered unexpected chemical activity in the Martian soil, but provided no clear evidence of microbial life.

In recent years some researchers, such as former Viking scientist Gilbert Levin, Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez (University of Mexico), and Dirk Schulze-Makuch (Washington State University), have disputed those findings. They maintain that Viking’s instrumentation may not have been able to detect certain types of organic compounds which would serve as positive indicators of life. It’s certainly an interesting view, but to the best of my knowledge is not (yet) one directly supported by evidence. Debates have continued about these issues for years, albeit on a relatively small scale.

Schulze-Makuch has released a new report on the subject at this year’s American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Washington; subsequently, the Associated Press posted news of his findings, but was unfortunately scant on detail. The article basically restates the arguments in those I’ve linked above, that simple Martian life may have gone undetected by Viking’s equipment. Included in the original article, however, was this phrase:

The Viking experiments of the ’70s wouldn’t have noticed alien hydrogen peroxide-based life and, in fact, would have killed it by drowning and overheating the microbes

While the killing of microbes wasn’t the main focus of the story, other media outlets ran the same article but attached ridiculous headlines, totally skewing the report in the process. CNN, for example, originally published the report under the headline Scientist: NASA found life on Mars - and killed it. They’ve since changed the title, but thanks to Google’s cache, here’s how it initially appeared. CBS News went the same route, with: Mars Killers From Earth?

Sigh.

This kind of sensationalism is already particularly silly, but in this case it’s magnified by the lack of information in the original report. Due to the absence of pertinent details, it paints a picture of NASA having sent the Viking landers to haphazardly dump chemicals on the surface of Mars, which was far from the case. The landers were equipped with soil scoops that obtained small quantities of Martian soil - on the order of a few cubic centimeters in total - placed them in a small bin, and tested them internally. Less-savvy readers might incorrectly infer that NASA made some sort of huge mistake, and killed off significant quantities of Martian life. As it stands, we still don’t have any solid evidence for life on Mars, microbial or otherwise.

It ticks me off that media outlets would try to rehash an old story and spin it in a way that makes NASA look bad. The quality of CNN’s science reporting has been conspicuously poor for some time though, so I’m not sure why things like this surprise me.

Don’t try to serve me Spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam and tell me it’s Lobster thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce, garnished with truffle paté.