Thread: NASA to Make Major Announcement About Search for Alien Life Today @ 2pm

Originally Posted by Spartiate

The concept of government in other countries is hardly that of master and servant. Politicians in the canadian system are very... replaceable. There would be a lot of movement of personnel, people coming in the know every year. Government employees are normal people too, so if that many people can be made privy of such info and deal with it, why can't the public?

Once again, I don't really know anything about the Canadian system. You say I think too much like an American. I say you might be thinking too much like a Canadian. It does work both ways. I can really only form my opinion on what I have been exposed to (which one could consider as a logical fallacy, I suppose, but it's one we are all guilty of).

But just to toy with the idea: How many videos/documentaries/texts have you seen with former government agents - even high ranking ones - that have come out with extra-ordinary claims about the "secrets" of government and/or UFO encounters, after they have left their positions? How are those people often received/treated by the public? If you're being honest with yourself, the answer is: "Like lunatics." The knee-jerk reaction of the general public - who tend to avoid anything that could even be remotely interpreted as 'conspiracy-theorist' like the plague - is to immediately write off someone making such a claim without having something as definitive as a spaceship in a barn, as being completely off their rocker. Credentials don't seem to matter, in such a situation.

Hell, even President Carter has been very outspoken, in his belief of alien contact with our planet. And we all know how well that's worked out for him.

I also don't believe that the turnover for personnel with access to that sort of intel is like shift change at Wal-Mart. I'm sure that there are probably contracts/safeguards against people just getting off the clock, and going out and blabbing to everyone about what they did at work. Most of the people that do come forward with their experience has talked about the turmoiltuous times they have had, trying to do so.

Originally Posted by spockman

Except that I am pretty sure people involved in the cover ups would, at some point, leak the info. But if they were anonymous, they could not prove they had valid evidence that came from the government in the first place. The government as a whole could just claim it is all made up and that would be good enough refutation for most people.

Not only is this agreeable, but it's easily the most likely outcome.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

Why would any evidence only be in the hands of "the" government?

Once again, I agree with spockman. Think about it. Whenever we hear about some major, national/global situation, event or finding, it's either through the mainstream (which, believe it or not, is largely government-overseen in America, and I'm sure many other places around the world) or independent sources, which must usually be cross-referenced for validity. There are news sources all over the world that make extra-ordinary claims, and I don't know about you, but I don't read any single source of an amazing claim without cross-referencing it with something else, before asserting that it's probably cold, hard fact. This goes right back to the Bigfoot picture analogy I used, earlier. Just because some independent source tells you that he was in the woods and caught a picture of Bigfoot, doesn't mean that same picture is going to be universally accepted as an actual picture of Bigfoot.

Originally Posted by Spartiate

I don't know, a lot of people don't trust the government and a lot of reputable scientists and researchers don't work for the government.

And a lot of reputable scientists and researchers have to contend with the paradigm that "unless it coincides with mainstream knowledge/information - and if it's that 'crazy' of a claim - it's probably not true." Just ask Dean Radin and other parapsychologists, who have had undeniable results (though not so 100% definitive as the spaceship in a barn-esque 'proof') in PSI experiments. Their claims are so wild that they are brushed away by the mainstream community as 'ludicrous', because of the lack of the aforementioned 'Spaceship.' I am, in no way, making any claim to whether or not those findings are true, here; merely commenting on how they are often received, even by people who have no solid arguments to the contrary.

Fringe science - despite what many may believe - is not nearly as easily accepted as mainstream science, and it is often met with vile, defamatory dissent, which can often quickly grow into a 'mob mentality.' If you make such an extraordinary claim, you had better have that spaceship in the barn, or you might just be laughed right out of your field - and there will be very few people in the public who will take you seriously, as well, as long as the dissent is more easily perpetuated than support for your claim...and it usually is.

And before you throw out another tinfoil hat reference, this is something that I've actually spent some time looking into, in the past, and I invite you to do a little digging into it yourself. Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Josephson calls it Pathological Disbelief, and being that you are someone who seems to believe that the only thing needed to overturn such widely-accepted paradigms as whether aliens (or metaphysics) exist is good evidence, I think understanding his point might benefit you.

I know I'm late on this one and I'd say its a very profound discovery. I'll just add this little piece here. I think in order to understand this organism, we have to come to the realization that it's not an organism that has a completely different bio-chemistry make up and it's not an arsenic based organism. This is an extremophile that can make use in a facultative manner of arsenic when it's available in the environment. However, the preference would probably be phosphate considering the environment contains phosphorous as well and that phosphorous was stripped from the organism in the lab. Meaning, the organism was not doing what it naturally does. Nevertheless it's a great discovery.

As expected, this big story turned out to be bullshit. Two articles just came out in Science, looks like the bug is just resistant to arsenic, and doesn't use it instead of phosphorous. The original findings were the result of sloppy experiments.
GFAJ-1 Is an Arsenate-Resistant, Phosphate-Dependent Organism
Absence of Detectable Arsenate in DNA from Arsenate-Grown GFAJ-1 Cells

All hail the self-correcting nature of science.

It was terrible science, never should have been published and should immediately be retracted.

Looks like the original authors may well have destroyed (or seriously damaged) their careers over such sloppy work.