Over the last year, I have been fascinated by the brouhaha surrounding the Science article about a bacterium that was reported to incorporate arsenic in its DNA backbone rather than phosphorus. Part of my attraction to the story is the novelty of the observations, but I have also been interested by the response of the research community. Scientists are, rightly, a skeptical lot, but when unexpected results are reported, it seems that choruses of “nonsense” (or other, more unsavory terms) always arise. What is unfortunate is that disagreements over data interpretation sometimes degenerate into personal assaults on scientific competence.
I learned from personal experience that sometimes the most seemingly wrong data actually turn out to be correct. In my case, the controversy was over the ...
