A research team has just published a new analysis[PDF] (abstract) of 36-year-old data from the Viking lander. According to the researchers, statistical analysis of the data shows that the Viking lander did, in fact, find evidence for life on Mars.
I'd really like to believe it, but I'm skeptical. Follow me over the paramecium for some ramblings and ruminations. And please add your own in the comments.
Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm not a scientist (although a long, long time ago I did enough work in a lab to get my name on a paper.) There's a lot in that PDF that I frankly admit I can't begin to understand. Yet there's also some language in there that triggers alarm bells:
We now report a new methodological approach to these data, complexity analysis. Due to the high order present in biological systems[11], time series of biological variables, with their short- and long-range correlations, scale-invariance, complex periodic cycles, quasi-periodicities, positive and inverse “memory” and the like, exhibit behaviours that are different from the complete unpredictability of pure random physical processes (white noise). Moreover, they are also distinguishable from the trivially smooth landscape of a completely predictable deterministic process, often manifesting themselves with flicker (pink) noise (temporal scale statistical invariance) [12, 13]. We have now found that a set of complexity measures (appendix#1 for definition) unambiguously distinguishes the active LR experiments, or portions thereof, from various abiotic controls (p<0.001). These measures very strongly suggest, in agreement with terrestrial analyses, that the active LR experiments in all likelihood detected microbial life on Mars.
To this nonscientist, the references to the "complexity" of biological systems, making them somehow distinguishable from nonbiological systems, is entirely reminiscent of the
Watchmaker argument put forth by creationists. In short, the creationists look at a watch, see design there, and say "Aha! Someone must have designed this!". They then look at a biological system, see design, and say "Aha! Someone must have designed this!". Yet there is, if you will, a missing link in their argument: they have not been able to explain
why they look at a biological system and see design. Creationists have never proffered a method for
systematically identifying designed systems, other than by
post hoc analysis. In other words, if we are to know whether or not a system shows evidence of design, we must simply take their word for it.
Perhaps this finding is different. But I'm not the only skeptic:
Critics counter that the method has not yet been proven effective for differentiating between biological and non-biological processes on Earth so it's premature to draw any conclusions.
"Ideally to use a technique on data from Mars one would want to show that the technique has been well calibrated and well established on Earth. The need to do so is clear; on Mars we have no way to test the method, while on Earth we can," planetary scientist and astrobiologist Christopher McKay, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., told Discovery News.
On the other hand, if they've succeeded in defining complexity as it relates to biological systems, then perhaps the path is cleared for creation science to evolve into...
a science. But I'm not holding my breath.
Is there a xenobiologist in the house? Or a quantitative complexity theorist? Whatever planet you're from, please feel free to add your thoughts below.
UPDATE 10:18PM EDT: I'd like to clarify that the comparison to creationism is not intended as any sort of "proof" that the new report is incorrect. I have too much respect for science to make that kind of argument. I raised it only to illustrate why I, personally, am reluctant to embrace this report as a proof that there is life on Mars. With more understanding of what these scientists are really trying to demonstrate, perhaps I'd be able to lose my skepticism.