The world was stunned when NASA announced last December that arsenic-based life existed on Earth, a finding that ran counter to everything we believed, suggesting a parallel life form was possible on our planet. Then the microbes hit the fan, and Felisa Wolfe-Simon, the young astrobiologist at the center of the discovery, was caught up in a firestorm. The opening of a Tom Clynes article on the controversy at Popsci:

“It is this mud, and the peculiar microbes in it, that have stuck Wolfe-Simon in the middle of one of the most extraordinary scientific disputes in recent memory. Last December, at a highly publicized NASA press briefing, Wolfe-Simon announced that her research team had isolated bacteria from Mono Lake, on the edge of California’s Eastern Sierra mountain range, that could subsist on arsenic in place of phosphorus, one of the elements considered essential for all life.

The research, financed mostly by NASA and published initially in the online edition of Science, jolted the scientific community. If confirmed, scientists said, the discovery would mean that this high mountain lake hosts a form of life distinct from all others known on Earth. It would open up the possibility of a shadow biosphere, composed of organisms that can survive using means that long-accepted rules of biochemistry cannot explain. And it would give Mono Lake, rather than Mars or one of Jupiter’s moons, the distinction of being the first place in our solar system where ‘alien’ life was discovered.

But within days, researchers began to question Wolfe-Simon’s methodology and conclusions. Many of them cast aside traditions of measured commentary in peer reviewed periodicals and voiced their criticism directly on blogs and Twitter. Then, as the conflict spilled into the mainstream, the scientific community witnessed something few would have predicted: meaningful public engagement over a serious scientific issue. For several days, at least, a good many water cooler conversations revolved around the metabolic capabilities of a Gammaproteobacterium.

Among academics, the debate devolved into something more vitriolic and personal. One researcher questioned whether Wolfe-Simon and her team were ‘bad scientists.’ Another called her work ‘science fiction.’ One blog post bore the title ‘Is Felisa Wolfe-Simon an Alien?'”

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“A tiny microbe that can survive concentrations of arsenic that would kill all normal life dead”: