Here is an interesting case study that might be of interest to the Church Virtual/Open Source Church/Wiki Church types out there.  In watching this unfold in my professional life I found some interesting parallels in what happened with the reaction to this scientific discovery and what I think about regarding how the church does theology and polity in a Web 2.0 world.

While I want to focus here on the interaction that took place in the on-line world, let me briefly describe the announced scientific discovery behind this so that you have some context.

Back on December 2 a team of researchers associated with the NASA Astrobiology Institute published an interesting paper in Science magazine and held a press conference hosted by NASA to announce and discuss their results from bacteria they found in Mono Lake, California.  This bacteria appears to, at least partially, substitute arsenic for phosphorus in the chemical building blocks of the cell.  These building blocks could include enzymes and proteins.  There is a good discussion of the science related to this in articles from Wired, Science Daily, and a NASA article.  The abstract, but not the full article, is publicly available from Science. (Those readers in academic or research settings may have institutional access to the full article.) Interestingly, while researching this story I found an article from last Spring in The Times (of London) that has much of the scientific story at that time.  If you are not familiar with the biology and chemistry behind this you might not realize that, if the results hold up, this is a very significant scientific discovery.  At a minimum, they have discovered a life form that can live in an extreme, and normally very toxic, environment.

Well, this story went “viral,” if you will pardon the expression.  The press conference was streamed and, having been tipped off by a colleague that it was “going to be interesting,” I followed along and heard the news and the discussion.  There was plenty of coverage of the event across the news spectrum ( for example PC Mag, The Boston Globe, The Telegraph, just to name a few in addition to those above)  as well as the blogosphere (e.g. WeirdWarp, The Curious Wavefunction ).

Now, previous controversial discoveries raised a bit of professional chatter as well as some brief media attention and then usually disappeared from the radar to all except those who really cared.  (an example in a moment)  This announcement took a different path — five days later a widely publicized critique also went viral.  The original critique by Rosie Redfield appeared on her blog as a way, as she puts it, to clarify her thinking.  This was picked up by Slate and then spread to other blogs and developed a life of its own with one asking if this was a NASA publicity stunt and another wondering if this is “flim-flam.”  In short, the new Web 2.0 allowed for scientists to “wonder out loud” to both their colleagues and the public and media at large as well as providing a platform for the general public to discuss and weigh in on a discovery which was not necessarily in their realm of expertise.

Speaking of “not in your realm of expertise” let me comment briefly on my professional view.  As I suggest above the results are interesting.  A number of years ago I was a bit player in some research on the tufa towers in Mono Lake so the environment is not completely unknown to me.  It is a weird and wonderful place but the habitat harsh.  Anything that survives there will be interesting.  To me these bacteria are clearly a good subject to understand better.  On the other hand… I am strongly persuaded by the arguments of the critics and find the most radical conclusions about the arsenic substituting for phosphorus lacking the strong support I would look for regarding such a revolutionary conclusion.  To invoke Carl Sagan’s second best known quote: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”

In short, what has happened here is that a tantalizing and potentially extraordinary discovery has been extracted from the “traditional” scientific process and is now “owned” by the greater on-line community through the ability to distribute the information to the whole world in real time and for the on-line community to be able to interact with it.

Whether you think that is a good thing or not we must accept that it is the new reality of our society.  If you want to make an announcement of an extraordinary discovery to the world, be prepared to have anyone out there weigh in, not just your colleagues in the small academic fishbowl of your discipline.

Consider two previous extraordinary announcements.  Back in 1989 there was a claim that nuclear fusion could be accomplished on a lab bench at low temperatures – the so-called “cold fusion.”  Because the experiment was simple and the researchers published their experimental setup, physicists everywhere were trying to reproduce it, all without success.  But what happened is that the theory did not go away but a few people continued looking at the possibility even if the original experiment was not verified. (article in Wired, Wall Street Journal ) 

Another similar, and NASA connected, discovery was the announcement in 1996 of possible life preserved in a meteorite that originated from Mars.  The publication of this finding was also accompanied by a NASA news conference and picked up by the press.  But with a unique sample and without the web it left the skeptics in the general public without a forum for discussion or criticism.  Now, with time, the scientific community sees better explanations for what was seen in the original meteorite study, but like cold fusion a much lower profile search still continues. (Good backgr
ound info)

Returning to the arsenic life debate, the topic was hot enough that there was a panel discussion at the American Geophysical Union meeting regarding, not the science, but the course the reaction had taken.  This was live streamed and I enjoyed watching and tweeting my thoughts as the discussion progressed.  However, if you are looking for other Twitter messages check out the hashtag #arseniclife and the tweets by Alexandra Witze, @alexwitze, a contributing editor to Science News.  Her coverage was very good.  Some of her more thought provoking tweets about the process (names in front are the speakers on the panel – listing available from the panel moderator’s blog):

Steele: Everyone has a voice now. Is this how science will be self
correcting on a much quicker timescale? #arseniclife
#AGU10

Petit: Information is good, and messy. The more we have, the more it
flows and more robust society is #arseniclife
#AGU10

Steele: Scientists shd have more responsibility to understand effect of
what they say to public. #arseniclife#AGU10

Harris: Does refusing to engage in conversation ever help one’s case?
(Not that this happened here.) #arseniclife
#AGU10

Oremland: I think not engaging hurt us. Gave us appearance of being
elitist. #arseniclife
#AGU10

Petit: Peer review worked fine. It put out a hypothesis that’s being
chewed on pretty hard. #arseniclife
#AGU10

Steele: If you stick to peer review process are you being elitist? #arseniclife
#AGU10

Sperling: there is a time needed to get things right. Blogosphere will
claim it’s about conversation, but they want scoop #arseniclife

Oremland: Point is about human response to things without time for
reflection. #arseniclife
#AGU10

One final detail on this – while the researchers would have preferred to have responded in the traditional “comment and reply” format, the nature of the response in the blogosphere did persuade them to publish a non-traditional reply to the criticism that had been distributed.

Going forward it will be interesting to see how quickly these claims are verified or contradicted.  It will also be interesting to see how quickly the viral nature of this news dissipates.

Regarding what this means for any organization and it’s interaction with modern society and culture I encourage you ponder this case study and come to your own conclusions and lessons.  Having reflected on this for almost a month now, let me share a few things that come to mind.

1) The easier access to information and the ability to discuss it has changed society.  Just as Luther’s German Bible and the Authorized Version of the English Bible put God’s word in the language of the people, the Internet now puts all manner of information at our finger tips.

2) But maybe this information is too easily available.  As the final tweets suggest “there is a time needed to get things right” and time is needed for reflection.  Do we get information too fast to be able to put it in context and reflect on the meaning?  Do we get too much information to be able to process it properly?
 
3) What is the responsibility of those of us with formal training in these areas to others who are trying to figure out what is means?  How do we communicate if what we view as being responsible is viewed by the general population as being elitist?

4) What have 8-second sound bites, a 24/7 news cycle, and 140 character messages done to our ability to communicate and discuss complex or deep concepts?  Are we looking too quickly for the bullet point or the executive summary with out looking for what is behind it or how it fits into a bigger picture?

Anyway, those are questions that come to mind for me.  Your mileage may vary.  But have fun with it.