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Josh Landis, National Science Foundation
Russia's Vostok Station, in a photograph taken during the 2000 to 2001 field season.
By Elizabeth Howell
LiveScience
Late last week, a Russian news outlet reported that scientists at Antarctica's Lake Vostok, buried under miles of ice, said they had found bacteria that appeared to be new to science. Now, the head of that lab has said the signature is actually just contamination, leading outside researchers to say that the Russian team rushed too quickly to announce the possibility of new bacterial life.
Russian news media reported last week that the team had found DNA from a microbe that did not appear in databases and is only 86 percent similar to others on Earth — considered a reliable threshold of new life.
On Monday, the lab analyzing the finding said it was not new bacteria that generated the signal, but contamination.
"We found certain specimens, although not many. All of them were contaminants," laboratory head Vladimir Korolyov said in a quote attributed in media reports to the Interfax news agency.
The quick backtrack illustrates the danger of bypassing peer review when announcing new results, Peter Doran, an Arctic and Antarctic researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told OurAmazingPlanet.
'You can say anything you want in a press release'
Peer review is the scientific process that all findings must undergo before work is published, generally in the form of a paper in a scientific journal. The research comes under the scrutiny of other scientists in the field and is validated and questioned before anything goes to print. That's not the case in a news report.
For that reason, the scientists who OurAmazingPlanet spoke with said that it was hard for them to discuss why the Russians failed since they do not even know, for example, what contaminates were found in the lab. That information could take weeks or months to surface.
"You can say anything you want in a press release," Doran said. "The peer review literature (by contrast) is very controlled. It needs to be substantiated, and written in clear language."
"I tell my students," he continued, "don't trust anything you read in the popular press. Even if there is a paper, there's often a disconnect between what is in the paper and in the popular press."
Peer review, however, can take years, acknowledged David Pearce, a researcher with the British Antarctic Survey who worked on a similar British effort to drill into buried Lake Ellsworth. (That effort failed and is being subject to a review board. The results should be published around May, at which point the British will decide whether to try again.) [Extreme Antarctica: Amazing Photos of Lake Ellsworth]
Taxpayers are often impatient to find out what is going on, Pearce said, and the press works to fill that need. A balance must be struck between these needs, he added.
"It's important (the public) is kept informed of what's going on, and the interesting things that are coming out," Pearce said. Science, by contrast, requires time and careful thought.
"You do want to find out what's happened to the research money," he added, "but you don't want to say too much too soon."
Sterilization part of best practice
The Russian researchers not only faced challenges concerning announcing their findings, but also scientific challenges in their quest to discover life.
It's still not known what kind of life, if any, lies below the 2 miles (3 kilometers) of ice that sits on top of Lake Vostok. As far as researchers know, the underground freshwater has been lying there untouched for more than a million years.
Confirming that any possible signature of life is not a contaminant is complicated, to say the least.
There's a strict protocol the Americans strive to follow in Antarctica, said Doran, who is familiar with the practices of the U.S. Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling project (WISSARD) team that worked this year at Antarctica's Lake Whillans.
Doran could not speak specifically to the Russians, but said the American work demonstrates a good methodology.
In WISSARD's case, it involves sterilizing all the equipment with hydrogen peroxide gel or a similar product, then hermetically sealing it in bags for shipment. Scientists on-site sterilize the water in the drill system through several steps that include filters and life-killing ultraviolet radiation.
As the drill progresses through the ice, the scientists monitor cell counts to make sure there are no unexplained jumps.
WISSARD recently announced life findings of its own, but Doran was equally skeptical of that until a paper comes out confirming the work. [Gallery: Finding Life in a Buried Antarctic Lake]
To the WISSARD announcement, Doran said, "I understand how it happened. There are embedded reporters in the field with them. They are sitting around the dinner table together, and drinking Scotch together, and the reporters are right there (when scientists say) 'Our cell counts are way up when we've gone into the lake water.'"
"Of course that gets reported, but without the peer review literature, it's still a violation of how the standard things are done," Doran said.
Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace. Follow OurAmazingPlanet @OAPlanet, Facebook and Google+.
- Strangest Places Where Life Is Found on Earth
- Antarctica: 100 Years of Exploration (Infographic)
- Extreme Life on Earth: 8 Bizarre Creatures
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Leave a Comment:
Aw, shucks. Next time, don't sneeze on the samples, Igov!
Great! The whole lake may now be contaminated.
A lot of this was started by medical schools in this country. Medical schools lack much of the scientific rigor that characterizes most academic science. And medical school reesearch is often conducted by people (MD's) with no training or credentials in research methods.
This means that medical publication is dicey. A recent study by Bayer found that almost two-thirds of all medical findings in medical journals cannot be replicated or substantiated. And in a "research" physicians c.v. you often find "mips" which medical schools count as close to peer-reviewed journals in impact. It stands for "Mentioned In the Press." This sort of thing diverts billions of dollars of medical research money into lame goose chases, but enriches medical schol researchers and the schools themselves.
This sort of "rush to publication" to include premature media announcements is becoming more and more common. We are seeing an average of 200 major disease "cures" a month now --- but none of it is making it into actual medical use. We see all sorts of "treatments" for everything from HIV to the common cold that are entirely bogus, but are based on some stray piece of research that was conducted in a reputable medical school and published in supposedly peer-reviewed (usually other MDs with no research training or skills) medical journals.
The medical journals also seldom publish negative results, so MDs seeking to publish are pressed to have only positive outcomes in order to be published. Your odds of even a major negative finding being published are around 1 in 20.
Retractions are few and far between because editors fear ruining the careers of other MDs and they feel that retractions undermine the credibility of their journmals. But if you really want to undermine science, you get to a situation where you only publish about half od what is valuable and get two-thirds of that wrong.
Now this sort of rush to the press publication fever is striking everywhere and is getting worse and worse. Its not just Russian scientists but more and more academic researchers are feeling the pressure of chasing a diminishing amount of research dollars (research as a function of GDP is the lowest since WWI) and to have only positive outcomes (even if the data doesn't support them) and it is apparently okay of your results cannot be reproduced (because you misinterpreted or fudged the data.)
This sort of thing is killing medical research. And it looks like the Russians are doing the same for Antarctic microbiology.
One could argue this is a direct result of a scientifically illiterate America. We expect results now, without waiting for peer review or tolerating any science that doesn't directly produce something. You read the comments here all the time: How much did that waste of taxpayer money cost? Who cares about that study subject? We spent 5 yrs discovering that something doesn't work?
Never mind an actual understanding of research methods and statistics. I hope we aren't doomed to become our lowest common denominator.
Absolutely agree AG99. As a former biomedical engineering major, our published work was incredibly important to us. The veracity of the data contained were measured and weighed. We were taught to give research due diligence and not jump the gun as so many press releases do. A lot of that can be blamed on a culture that has almost no interest in furthering their pursuit of knowledge and instead have it spoon fed to them and then they question the research if it doesn't bear fruit for any immediate benefit to themselves.
My former professors would weep if they were still alive.
While I agree that luddites are a problem, I hardly think it's any different now than in any other point in history. Scientists have always had a hard time getting funding, and many people with money are only interested in what they can get out of the discoveries in actual, utilitarian products. It's unfortunate, but as far as I can tell it hasn't actually changed, although it's become a lot easier for those that disparage discovery to pester those that promote it (if we're using these comment boards as a standard).
So I wouldn't say that we're doomed to become the lowest common denominator, rather that we're doomed to always have to put up with it.
I think there can be a compromise between waiting years for results versus releasing preliminary reports into the press, with caviats in place so that people know: perhaps this is contamination, but if not then...
I kind of feel the same way about robocar on mars: I wait soooo long for results that by the time I hear about them, I forget what they were about. Plus they are going soooo slow in what they are doing in mars, probably for the same reasons above, I'm concerned by the time they do something, the dang lab instruments will be broken. Just recently the software had to go on back up since the original failed. This whole mission was a MIRACLE to even make it safely to the surface, you would think they would drill baby drill and at least get some initial results in, just in case something happens (robocar gets stuck, etc).
Russian scientists seem to have a history of announcing "breakthrough" discoveries prematurely. And we are catching up as science becomes more about instant profit making and less about expanding our knowledge. Unfortunate.