Rosie Redfield has a "must read" post, Arsenic-associated bacteria (NASA's claims). I won't excerpt it, read the whole thing. To me it is very interesting that many pieces of her critique are ones I've encountered in emails or Facebook postings. She stitches them together into a coherent whole. She'll be writing a letter to Science. Hopefully they'll publish it. Even if you don't have a deep background in microbiology and biochemistry I think it was clear that the authors had jumped to some inferences too quickly. (Acknowledgement, John Hawks) Update: Also, Arsenate-based DNA: a big idea with big holes:
So the Sargasso Sea tells us that some bacteria are capable of making DNA at very low phosphate concentrations. The most plausible explanation is that the bacterium GFAJ-1 can make normal DNA at micromolar phosphate concentrations, and that it also has the ability to tolerate very high arsenate concentrations.
This seems like the "boring," but most plausible, explanation. Update II: David Dobbs reviews the journalistic response. I think that people who write about science were in a bind because of the structural problems that David points out. When I first skimmed the paper it seemed to claim too much, but I had to keep in mind that it got through peer review. On the other hand as I stated once scientists in a position to critique on a genuinely technical dimension started complaining really loudly on social networking, that changed my own perception really quickly.
