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100M-Year-Old Seafloor Sediment Bacteria Have Been Resuscitated
- ncmncm 6y agoA couple of decades ago, somebody pulled bacteria from the crops of bees trapped in amber for tens of millions of years, and revived them, and compared their genes to those of bacteria from modern bees. The biology community at the time was rather worse than derisive. Max Planck is quoted, "Science progresses one funeral at a time." In most fields it is easy to find correct results just waiting for their opponent to retire or die, and many more abandoned before that could happen, and now lying forgotten in drawers. The claim that science always gets it right in the end is falsified: for every Mendel and Alvarez vindicated, an unknown number, probably many more than one, die unrecognized. The most fertile source of now-viable results is probably publications by women and minorities driven from their field. After opponents retire, many seem to go on to defend Wikipedia pages against current results.
- nobodyandproud 6y agoWe see this again and again. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” But no answer on the following: How to get said extraordinary evidence when derision effectively kills any funding or collaboration? Fringe claims rightly needs to be looked at skeptically, but it’s not science if experiments and analysis can’t happen.
- ncmncm 6y ago"Extraordinary evidence" nowadays means "evidence you will be prevented from obtaining, or that you have but we will refuse to read". Predictable, really. All a claim needs to be "extraordinary" is to provoke uncomfortable questions, such as would require some tenured professor to learn a new skill. Even direct observations can be extraordinary, now.