NASA sued by idiot

[2MuchMark]

Arrgh

A California man who claims that a mysterious rock recently photographed on Mars is actually a growing organism has filed a lawsuit against NASA for failing to investigate the discovery.

Rhawn Joseph, who describes himself as an astrobiologist, filed a petition Jan. 27 in U.S. District Court in northern California. Joseph asked the court to compel NASA to "scientifically examine and investigate a putative biological organism."

"The refusal to take close-up photos from various angles, the refusal to take microscopic images of the specimen, the refusal to release high-resolution photos is inexplicable, recklessly negligent and bizarre," Joseph stated in the petition.

Full story at http://www.chron.com/about/article/S...ck-5184690.php

[ottopottomouse]

Can't they strap him to a firework and send him to have a closer look himself?

[sandman!]

[seeandsee]

It's all fake and filmed in Arizona

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

We're from France...

ADG

[Mediamix]

Originally Posted by ottopottomouse

Can't they strap him to a firework and send him to have a closer look himself?

[dehash]

He is right, all paid from his taxes, he has a right to have a better quality picture

[RyuLion]

Not the first idiot...

[Marcus Aurelius]

well, NASA has no explanation of how that rock appeared there, so it could very well be a living organism

[GregE]

Originally Posted by Marcus Aurelius

well, NASA has no explanation of how that rock appeared there, so it could very well be a living organism

Rather more likely that it just dropped out of the sky. Literally.

Shit drops down onto the Earth, Mars and everywhere else regularly. Plus Mars has a thinner atmosphere, so it stands to reason that more space debris will make it to the surface there (without burning up) than here.

[Rochard]

Give that man a firearm and eventually it will sort itself out.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Originally Posted by GregE

Rather more likely that it just dropped out of the sky. Literally.

Shit drops down onto the Earth, Mars and everywhere else regularly. Plus Mars has a thinner atmosphere, so it stands to reason that more space debris will make it to the surface there (without burning up) than here.

wouldn't it leave at least a small crater on impact?

[dyna mo]

Contrary to the OP, Rhawn Joseph is a PHD educated accomplished author and also submitted his original article on the matter to the peer-reviewed cosmology.com website.

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&fiel...Rhawn%20Joseph

http://cosmology.com/


Far from an idiot.

[jmcb420]

Originally Posted by Marcus Aurelius

wouldn't it leave at least a small crater on impact?

If it came in on an angle, it could have bounced and landed there. Or it could be a fragment of a bigger one that just happened to land there.

Either way, it's a rock. The analysis NASA did says it's rather high in magnesium (I think that's what it was..) Much ado about nothing, imo.

NASA detecting methane in the atmosphere has been the highlight of this current mission.

[GregE]

Originally Posted by Marcus Aurelius

wouldn't it leave at least a small crater on impact?

Good point. Then again it might have landed a bit further away and then it (or a part of it) bounced at a much slower velocity into the camera's view.

[crockett]

It was probably a blob of grease that fell out of the rover..

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Originally Posted by dyna mo

Contrary to the OP, Rhawn Joseph is a PHD educated accomplished author and also submitted his original article on the matter to the peer-reviewed cosmology.com website.

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&fiel...Rhawn%20Joseph

http://cosmology.com/


Far from an idiot.

Joseph's Ph.d is NOT in Astrobiology, or anything connected to what he is suing about...

Dr. Joseph obtained his Ph.D. from the Chicago Medical School and completed his training at Yale University Medical School (in the department of Neurology and Neuropsychology)

Ah yes, Rhawn Joseph, the publisher of the Journal of Cosmology:

I've mentioned Cosmology before ? it isn't a real science journal at all, but is the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth.

It doesn't exist in print, consists entirely of a crude and ugly website that looks like it was sucked through a wormhole from the 1990s, and publishes lots of empty noise with no substantial editorial restraint.

For a while, it seemed to be entirely the domain of a crackpot named Rhawn Joseph who called himself the emeritus professor of something mysteriously called the Brain Research Laboratory, based in the general neighborhood of Northern California (seriously, that was the address: "Northern California"), and self-published all of his pseudo-scientific "publications" on this web site.

It is not an auspicious beginning. Finding credible evidence of extraterrestrial microbes is the kind of thing you'd expect to see published in Science or Nature, but the fact that it found a home on a fringe website that pretends to be a legitimate science journal ought to set off alarms right there.

Remember when, as scientists, we?re told to check our sources? Well, this is the reason. Right off the bat, context clues should have given this away as too good to be true.

First and foremost, the news was broken by Fox News. Fox News is a lot of things, but a scientific publication it isn?t.

Skeptical clue #1. Next, note that this paradigm-shifting paper was published in something called the Journal of Cosmology, and not Nature or Science.

Third, a brief search for information about the Journal of Cosmology reveals that it?s web-only, of poor quality, and seems to be published for the benefit of one crank, Rhawn Joseph. I mean, the headline of the article itself links to a $94 book by the author - come on!

Furthermore, the quality of the article itself is exceptionally low. In the media articles, an intelligent-sounding woman with nice credentials gave some reassuring quotes about the peer-review process, but apparently no one decided to fact check her.

Interspersed with low-quality and inconsistent electron micrographs of bacteria are also images of mammoth hair and mummy skin. Here is Myer?s take:

The extraterrestrial ?bacteria? photos are a pain to browse through, as well, because they are published at a range of different magnifications, and even when they are directly comparing an SEM of one to an SEM of a real bacterium, they can?t be bothered to put them at the same scale.

Peering at them and mentally tweaking the size, though, one surprising result is that all of their boojums are relatively huge ? these would be big critters, more similar in size to eukaryotic cells than E. coli. And all of them preserved so well, not crushed into a smear of carbon, not ruptured and evaporated away, all just sitting there, posing, like a few billion years in a vacuum was a day in the park. Who knew that milling about in a comet for the lifetime of a solar system was such a great preservative?

Basically, the data is complete rubbish. Nothing about this whole spectacle should lend it any credibility.

ADG

[dyna mo]

Thank you, having a PHD from a combined chicago school of medicine and Yale only supports my point that he is not an idiot.

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Originally Posted by dyna mo

Thank you, having a PHD from a combined chicago school of medicine and Yale only supports my point that he is not an idiot.

Do you consider Col. Sanders a military expert, too?



Haven't you ever been even slightly curious about why it is that most of the Ph.d's that conspiracy theory website's and their followers repeatedly cite, seem to frequently have degree's within fields totally different than what they are trying to sound alarms about?



ADG

[dyna mo]

Those quotes adg included are from a blogger named PZ Myers,

Paul Zachary "PZ" Myers graduated from the University of Washington in 1979 with Bachelor of Science in zoology. Myers drifted away from this field toward evolutionary developmental biology and obtained a PhD in Biology from the University of Oregon.

Certainly not an expert in astrobiology.

[The Sultan Of Smut]

Originally Posted by Marcus Aurelius

well, NASA has no explanation of how that rock appeared there

They must have had a more important rock to look at rather than solve a mystery.

[dyna mo]

Originally Posted by AsianDivaGirlsWebDude

Do you consider Col. Sanders a military expert, too?



Haven't you ever been even slightly curious about why it is that most of the Ph.d's that conspiracy theory website's and their followers repeatedly cite, seem to frequently have degree's within fields totally different than what they are trying to sound alarms about?



ADG

You're obviously still upset by your misunderstanding my comment in your other thread because, again, this has nothing to do with the simple fact that Rhawn Joseph is not an idiot

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Originally Posted by dyna mo

You're obviously still upset by your misunderstanding my comment in your other thread because, again, this has nothing to do with the simple fact that Rhawn Joseph is not an idiot

Doubling down, dyna mo style:

This isn?t the first time that Rhawn Joseph has sued NASA:

In 2012, Joseph sued NASA for what he dubbed a ?terrorist campaign of lies, deceit, fraud, defamation, libel, and slander, to discredit all discoveries which demonstrate the existence of extraterrestrial microbial and other forms of extraterrestrial life.?

He also has a pending lawsuit against Amazon for the company's refusal to ?directly sell books authored or published by the Plaintiff.? (A search on Amazon for Rhawn Joseph turns up a handful of books, which all appear to be self-published titles.) A prior suit against Amazon in 2001 was also dismissed.

The earlier lawsuit against NASA appears to have been dismissed or withdrawn.

I keep sweeping out my garage, but gravel always reappears. Aliens.

One of "Dr." Rhawn Joseph's books:

America Betrayed: Table of Contents

THOSE WHO BURN BOOKS: When History Repeats Itself. The Nazi Roots.

THE NAZI-TERRORIST OIL-CONSPIRACY

THE BROTHERHOOD OF DEATH

CIA-NAZIS: TERROR & MURDER INCORPORATED: Corporate Terrorism, Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, Watergate and the Kennedy Assassination

THE TERRORIST ASSASSINS: Operation Gladio, Rockefeller, Bush, the For-Reagan Assassinations

THE TANGLED ROOTS OF TERRORISM: Wahhabism, Nicaragua, Iran-Iraq War, Iran-Contra, and the Sadat Assassination

BUSH-LADEN, WAHHABISM & THE GULF WAR

BIOLOGICAL ETHNIC WEAPONS: THE U.S. TERRORIZES AMERICANS: IG Farben, AIDs, Anthrax, Eugenics

OSAMA BIN LADEN, AFGHANISTAN, TALIBAN, AL-QAEDA, FLORIDA & GEORGE BUSH
BUSH, FBI & CIA SABOTAGE PRE-9-11 INVESTIGATIONS: FBI/CIA Agents Working for Bin Laden?

9-11: BUSH KNEW & ALLOWED IT TO HAPPEN

TERROR FOR OIL

BIN LADEN THE BUSINESSMAN: "This is Not Terrorism. This is Strictly Business."

A TAIL OF TWO "HEROES": Drunk, Drugged & Getting Out of Harm's Way

Wow, I can see why you respect this man so much - he knows everything about everything. He makes it so you don't even have to think...

This guy has a case of the Dunning-Kruger syndrome. (He?s a neuropsychologist, not an astrobiologist.) He thinks he?s more of an expert than the experts.

Joseph writes for the Journal of Cosmology, not what the scientific community considers ?peer reviewed? or reputable ? it?s speculation and fringe theories.

There?s nothing wrong with that but for this guy to suggest that he knows better than NASA is quite some hubris. Geez, dude, don?t you think if they thought it was important they would give all they got to investigate it? Who wouldn?t want to find something fantastic on Mars? It would give their org a great boost. I have a problem with those who think the worst of people all the time ? scientists are on the take or stupid, for example.

I?ll be blunt ? this guy has a long record of crackpottery. I rarely get so personal but how arrogant can you get?! He is WELL KNOWN in the skeptical community. Rational Wiki calls him ?eccentric?. He apparently has threatened other authors for web content, and he makes fun of P.Z. Myers with goofy photos. Very professional. No wonder he has the reputation he does.

Let us know when Rhawn Joseph wins a lawsuit.



ADG

[dyna mo]

PZ Myers currently works with zebrafish in the field of evolutionary developmental biology and cultivates an interest in cephalopods.

Let us know when PZ myers does something, anything other than being butthurt about another science blogger who's been published more than he.

PZ Myers book, The Happy Atheist, has been published by Random House in August, 2013. It is largely a compilation of previous blog posts.

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

NASA Responds To Martian Life Lawsuit: It's Just A Rock

Earlier this week, we reported that NASA was being sued. The allegations? That the space agency had failed to conduct a proper examination of "life" on Mars, which had mysteriously appeared in front of the agency's Opportunity rover. (The space agency had already concluded it was a rock; the lawsuit alleges that NASA did not properly examine the object well enough to conclude that.) Here's the object:

A NASA spokesman, Bob Jacobs, released this statement to Popular Science:

This is an ongoing legal matter and we are limited in what we can discuss about the filing. However, NASA has been publicly sharing our ongoing research into the rock dubbed ?Pinnacle Island" since we originally released the images from the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity earlier this month.

The rock, which NASA is studying to better understand its chemical composition, also was widely discussed during a Jan. 22 NASA Television news conference. As we do with all our scientific research missions, NASA will continue to discuss any new data regarding the rock and other images and information as new data becomes available."

So, yeah: although the agency isn't opening up too much on the litigation, they're standing by their stance that the rock is, in fact, a rock, not an example of Martian life.

ADG

[pornmasta]

Originally Posted by AsianDivaGirlsWebDude

[IMG]http://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/styles/image_full/public/pia17761-1.jpg

ADG

cool, what's the scale of the picture ?

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Originally Posted by pornmasta

cool, what's the scale of the picture ?

?It?s about the size of a jelly doughnut,? Squyres* told Discovery News. ?It was a total surprise, we were like ?wait a second, that wasn?t there before, it can?t be right. Oh my god! It wasn?t there before!? We were absolutely startled.?

* "Squyres" is NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University.

[John-ACWM]

Originally Posted by ottopottomouse

Can't they strap him to a firework and send him to have a closer look himself?