Lagrange 5

waypoint to the past, present, and future of space

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Space.com responds to NASA's rebuttal

An article published on Space.com responds to NASA's Friday press release disputing a report that two of the agency's scientists have claimed evidence of present life on Mars.

On Wednesday, Space.com posted an "exclusive article" saying that two scientists from NASA's Ames Research Center claimed that they found evidence that life may now exist on Mars, and that a research paper had been submitted to a scientific journal for peer review. NASA issued a statement Friday refuting the claims.

Space.com's article on Saturday was intended to shore up its sources behind its original story and provide clarification, if not justification, for how it was presented.

Brian Berger, Space.com's staff writer for both pieces, indicated in Saturday's article that it was unclear whether or not the work of the scientists was submitted for peer review -- some sources said it had, others said it was a work in progress.

This moved away from the assertion in Wednesday's article, which said that two NASA scientists "have submitted their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper currently is being peer reviewed."

Berger's work is hampered by the fact that the NASA scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke, were unavailable for further clarification on the article, according to NASA.

However, a representative for the science journal Nature did say that it was not preparing to publish research by Stoker and Lemke.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home