re: Your Fundamental Misunderstanding
"NASA does not claim Viking proved no life on Mars. It claims there was insufficient evidence to conclude there was life on Mars and that the most likely explanation for VIKING's results was chemical rather than biological. If that's all you think Barry's Book proves then he has proved nothing but the accepted view."
That is the commonly made statement. But everyone knows what most scientists believe is that the Viking missions showed no life on Mars. For example, one of the key reasons given for why the Mars Sample Return mission would be safe was because there was virtually no chance for life being contained in one of the samples.
Bob Clark