There is a faction within NASA that sees Martian exobiology almost as a religious devotion. There is an even larger faction that sees Martian exobiology as the key to unlimited funding for interplanetary exploration. The "water on Mars" thing leads directly to Martian exobiology (can't have one without the other). I see Martian exobiology as a cherry flavored cyanide pill. There is some short term benefit from it but the long term consequence is guaranteed to be fatal.

Science can be directed to yield a desired political result without recourse to fraud. My favorite example is the gas chromatograph - mass spectrometer (GCMS) used on the Mars Viking lander. The instrument was extremely expensive. There was a significant cost over run with Viking due to the GCMS. The mission planners seriously considered deleting the cameras from the orbiter to save money for the GCMS (it could be argued after the fact that most of the useful science from Viking came from those cameras which fortunately did go to Mars). (Un)fortunately the only results that came from the GCMS was a "null result". It found no hydrocarbons on the surface of Mars. The mission planners did not anticipate that there were oxidants on the surface of Mars that actively destroyed hydrocarbons. What the mission planners did anticipate was the GCMS would detect complex hydrocarbons including simple amino acids. Trace amounts were supposably "guaranteed" to exist on the surface of Mars due to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites raining down on Mars which contain those chemicals (their origins are known to be nonbiological). The intention was for the newspaper headlines to read "Viking finds Amino Acids on Mars" and let the public make their own conclusions. Instead the Viking GCMS could only resolve traces of cleaning solvents used to manufacture the instrument (not what they expected). The mission planers spent all that money on the GCMS and got the precise opposite of what they wanted.

It is my contention that Mars can be a future home for mankind. Our scientific exploration of Mars should be directed towards the eventual colonization of that planet. Playing political games with the scientific planning only delays the more important goal of getting people there.

Gary