From: Ian Goddard (igoddard@erols.com)
Date: Wed Aug 14 1996 - 20:53:59 MDT
At 09:37 AM 8/10/96 UTC, Andray Dunnan wrote:
> First of all, how do the scientists know this rock came from Mars?
> We haven't physically retrieved rocks from Mars yet, so on what basis
> can they make this assertion?
>
> Secondly, how do they know that the alleged fossil microbes in the rock
> came from Mars, and not from some terrestrial contamination long ago?
IAN: In fact the rock was first identifed as being terrestrial. The
following information, if true, renders the rock * highly suspect.*
-------forwarded message------
From: cmeinel@nmia.com (Carolyn P. Meinel)
Newsgroups:sci.space.policy,sci.astro,alt.sci.planetary,
sci.astro.amateur,sci..bio,sci..bio..paleontology
Subject: Mars Life Announcement Fraud Issue
Date: 8 Aug 1996 15:43:55 GMT
Message-ID: <4ud1vr$is@hume.nmia.com>
David McKay, the NASA JSC scientist who recently announced the
discovery of evidence of life on Mars, has a history of alleged
scientific fraud.
These allegations arise out of his tenure as director of an Aug. 1984
NASA Summer Study held in La Jolla on the use of extraterrestrial
resources for building missile defenses.
At the end of the study McKay held a press conference in which
ex-astronaut Buzz Aldrin, (who had participated in the summer study
for only one day) announced that the approximately 20 college
professors who had participated for the entire duration of this study
had recommended building a lunar base and mining the moon to build
missile defenses. But in reality the professors had voted unanimously
*3 times* against recommending the building of a lunar base.
In Oct. 1985, at a major conference on the use of extraterrestrial
resources held in Washington DC, McKay put out a press release
accompanied by a putative final report of that summer study with the
names of the professors given as the alleged authors. This phony
report included the slogan "On to the Moon!" It claimed the professors
in this summer study had recommended building a lunar base.
You can read more details of this episode of McKay's scientific fraud
in pages 345-7 in the book "Space Resources: Breaking the Bonds of
Earth," by John S. Lewis and Ruth Lewis, Columbia University Press,
New York, 1987. Lewis was one of the professors who took part in that
summer study.
Judging by the fact that McKay is still an employee of NASA JSC, fraud
must not be a career liability over there.
Fraud. It is a dagger in the heart of science, especially when there
is only one small rock on which to base a claim that could touch off
the Copernican Revolution of biology. And especially when that
discovery would be so convenient for McKay and NASA.
-----end forwarded message------
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