Dogged pursuit of truth yields rewards
Pharyngula posts a great update on the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment that showed evidence for the potential of organic compounds developing naturally.
In a nutshell:
- Stanley Miller mixed water, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in a sealed flask, added electricity, and reported the formation of five amino acids.
- In the years since, scientists have concluded that the experimental "atmosphere" probably doesn't represent early Earth well, but the results still provide exciting evidence that organic compounds, and thus possibly life, can generate naturally.
- After Miller died in 2007, researchers came across his original samples - and upon re-analysis, discovered not five but 22 amino acids, and five amines.
A comment I left at Pharyngula summarizes my cheers for Miller, and the researchers who found that he had been more successful than he realized:
Here's what I love about this: Had "big science" been a "conspiracy" or "dogmatic religion" as some nuts love to charge, it could have taken those 1953 results and proclaimed proof (more or less) of abiogenesis. Case closed. Kick back and take it easy. (Fundamentalists could not have put forth any serious challenge to the claim; they can't even understand the results.)
But science didn't do that. It kept on checking and confronting and trying to find flaws in its results, on its own, with no help from religion. And on its own, science found and announced that the original experiment's reducing atmosphere likely isn't a valid representation of early Earth, letting some (but not all!) of the steam out of the experiment's findings.
Can you even imagine religious dogma trying to poke holes in itself, and honestly owning up to the flaws, like science did after Miller's find?
Well, this new bit of info, about the discovery of additional amino acids, shows that science's scrupulously honest self-policing sometimes turns up unexpected rewards. Well done, and well-deserved!
Religion, if you tried some honesty yourself, you too might unearth some welcome surprises.
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