Remember this before and after picture in the news recently from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity?
Well, it appears there’s a conspiracy theory under every rock, more fodder for Lewandowsky and Cook I suppose.
Science doesn’t advance by lawsuits, though some people think it does.
I’ll point out the obvious: that “biological organism” hasn’t moved since.
The explanation from NASA’s mission leader Steve Squires (al la Occams’ Razor):
“We think the most likely hypothesis is that it was dislodged by the rover wheels from a location that may currently be obscured by the solar arrays,” he said via email.
Squyres described the rock as “white around the outside, in the middle there’s low spot that is dark red. It looks like a jelly donut,” and said it’s like nothing they’ve ever seen before on Mars.
And Squires has a photo to back up the claim:
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-ideas-jelly-donut-mars.html#jCp
Anyone who’s ever driven a vehicle down a gravel road knows that rocks get dislodged by the tires and may move a foot or two.
The lawsuit seemed almost too ridiculous to be real, so I checked to see if the plaintiff was real. Yep, he has his own Wiki page.
Rhawn Joseph is a neuropsychologist who worked at the Veterans’ Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System in California.
He is involved with the Journal of Cosmology, and he advances eccentric views on the origin of life on Earth.[1]
Joseph is the author of Astrobiology: The Origins of Life and the Death of Darwinism, published in 2001. In the book he writes that “Contrary to Darwinism … the evidence now clearly indicates, that the evolution of life had been genetically predetermined and precoded…”
…
Joseph has been described by some evolutionary biologists as a crank for embracing unorthodox mechanisms of evolution. In one instance, the blogger P.Z. Myers ridiculed a claim by Joseph that a rock found on Mars is a living organism similar to a type of fungus existing on Earth.
In the lawsuit there is this language:
“Petitioner immediately recognized that bowl-shaped structure, hereafter referred to as Sol 3540, resembling a mushroom-like fungus, a composite organism consisting of colonies of lichen and cyanobacteria, and which on Earth is known as Apothecium.”
“When examined by Petitioner the same structure in miniature was clearly visible upon magnification and appears to have just germinated from spores.”
Strangely, and for the first time ever, I find myself in agreement with P.Z. Meyers.
h/t to reader Ed Zuiderwijk
Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/202863315/NASA-Lawsuit
This rock is as inexplicable as the popularity of the Kardashians.
It’s the dinar. The rock is the dinar.
Paper is the yuan, scissors are the lira
and climate change is the real.
Stones and ‘things’ that ‘move’ are nor new on Mars.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16389-what-has-been-moving-rocks-on-mars.html
http://www.bubblews.com/news/664784-strange-stone-moving-in-mars
“Mars – sometimes called the “Red Planet” because it appears, to the naked eye, to be orange – gets its name from the ancient Greek and Roman name “Mars,” meaning “Mars.” The planet has long captured the human imagination, because for many years, people thought that Martians might live there, based on the fact that there are canals, which suggests the presence of boats, and, in the words of the late Carl Sagan, “If there are boats, then there would have to be somebody to fix them.”
Today, we are pretty sure no one lives on Mars, at least not year-round. We base this on the fact that NASA has spent hundreds of millions of dollars sending unmanned space probes up there, and they have sent back thousands of pictures, all of them showing: rocks. Granted, there was one picture where, if you magnified the background, you could just make out a sign that said, “Palm Springs 47 miles.” But a NASA spokesman quickly explained that this “an optical illusion, caused by, um, hydrogen.””
~Dave Barry
@Zeke – Dave Barry is still the best! LOL
As a neuropsychologist who has ‘cross-trained’ into astrobiology (I have to wonder what kind of lab work an ‘astrobiologist’ does), one might expect that Joseph would be aware of what psychologists call ‘set expectation’, a form of bias in perception that causes the observer to favor whatever the observer expects to see. I think of this as the ‘Seek and Ye shall find’ error, related to Confirmation bias. There is also a strong element of pareidolia in this case.
Evidently the Dunning–Kruger effect controls this case.
“I’ll point out the obvious: that “biological organism” hasn’t moved since.”
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
There is an upside to this suit.
Maybe NASA will be forced to state that there, in fact, has been no life found on Mars, and based on their measurements, don’t expect to find any.
Instead of walking the nebulous line of legitimate scientific inquiry and promotional activity for tax dollars, NASA may have to be real for a moment.
It may be a breath of fresh air.
I would love to NASA defend science at the same time they trounce an ASTRObiologist. (astrobiology is the only “science” lower than phrenology)
Going to have to ban jelly donuts in the NASA cafeteria.
Let’s keep the site to discussions relating to Climate Science and not give kooks any more room to grow… possibly by making the climate more hostile to them.
Again I humbly submit my equation that calculates the likelihood of life in the known universe:
Westhaver Equation:
Proposal for a modified Drake Equation wherein the result is = 1.
X = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL : Drake Equation
Westhaver Equation: humbly,
1=N*Fa Fb Fc… Fn,
where Fa is a finely tuned attribute, Fb is yet another finely tuned attribute, Fc is yet another finely tuned attribute, and as many finely tuned attributes up to Fn such that the number of civilized planets converges to unity, because that is what the evidence shows.
If the Drake equation yields anything > 1 then it misses important limiting attributes.
Is this some kind of logic circle we are caught in? NASA and other space agencies are quick to make breathless, obligatory pronunciations on the possibility of life in the solar system (Europa), or in the Universe, in press releases that keep every one funding space exploration. Not to mention Panspermia, which may be more an integral part of evolutionary theory than many think. Then after we get to our hundred million dollar destination, only cranks think they see life forms.
One thing I can say, there are plenty of rocks on this earth that are round, and if you crack them open, are hollow. So I hate to see people who are not very familiar with the rocks on earth making dorks out of themselves and spending money on lawyers. What about the snail shaped rock?
I do not collect snail shaped rocks myself. But I bet there is someone who does (:
Holy Moly, look carefully at the before picture. There appears to be a face carved in the rock that is partially obscured by the “jelly donut” in the after picture. Spooky.
One of those dang Martians threw a rock at our rover and missed. 🙂
Ack ack ack ack ACK ACK! ACK ACK ACK “Ack ack” ACCKACK ACK ACK ACK AAAACK ACKAAACK! Ack ackackaaaaack ack.
ACK ack ack /ack.
Anthony Watts says:
January 31, 2014 at 7:50 am
Marnof +1
I had to chime in on this sci-fi story, having spent last night watching part of the 2008 remake of “The Day The Earth Stood Still.” I had to bail when Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) announced he was saving the planet from mankind’s imminent ecological destruction–by wiping out humanity! Too many parallels to today’s nauseating political atmosphere.
“We’re receiving communications from the “biological organism.” It appears to be repeating the same message, over and over:
ICH BIN EIN BERLINER…ICH BIN EIN BERLINER…ICH BIN EIN BERLINER“
Very funny! I didn’t recall much about the misconception that Kennedy had actually said “I am a jelly doughnut”, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has some background on the misconception. It was first picked up by the New York Times, then repeated by the BBC, Guardian, MSNBC, CNN, and Time magazine.
Why would a misconception like this be picked up by only the most left-wing publications, the same ones promoting climate alarmism? Perhaps Lewandowsky and Cook can noodle this one.
&
The whackjob is a psychologist. And so is the fellow who thinks that NASA is hiding evidence of animated breakfast pastries on Mars.
I think Brandon Schollenberger needs to take these data, apply the Lewandosky methodology, and tell us about the link between the profession of psychology and belief in wild interplanetary conspiracies.
It’s a booger from one of these….
🙂
Aw,come on now.It’s obvious. Rover took a dump…
Can someone please make an ANIGIF that flashes between the two pictures so we can see if there are other pebbles out of place? It is good for separating stars and planets. If it rolled there, perhaps there is a trail of disturbance.
REPLY: Do it yourself, I don’t think the issue is worth wasting any further time on – Anthony
This another example of why the US needs a loser pay rule, then we might see fewer frivolous lawsuits.
From Bart on January 31, 2014 at 10:30 am:
Just wait until the Martians send us the bill for operating unlicensed unregistered vehicles on their sovereign territory, and for doing it remotely by unlicensed operators with an unacceptable emergency response time. Those fees must be really adding up by now.
They might let pass the numerous other traffic law violations as all surface highway “markings” use RFID-style passive transponders embedded in enclosures that arguably resemble native rocks, due to the exorbitant costs of maintaining traditional signs and painted road marks. Just imagine the hypothetical budget for dusting off the roads.
But due to the public outcry over the egregious blatant violations of private property rights, rolling willy-nilly over people’s roofs at will, with a clear indication of further more-outrageous injustices to come, let alone the deliberate littering, the Martians may well demand satisfaction. They may come here and haul the head of the infringing organization back to Mars to face charges in a proper Martian court. And not the head of mere NASA, but go right to the very top of the management chain, to the person who could have stopped it, and yank him right from the Oval Office.
If we ask them to, nicely. We can always hope.
Maybe, if we are lucky, aliens will come down and shove a mind probe up Rhawn Joseph’s butt.
A classic example of “observer effect”, and fun too.
“I’ll point out the obvious: that “biological organism” hasn’t moved since.”
Of course it hasn’t moved; the rover it’s studying hasn’t moved.
“It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.”