http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-03j.html

"The Atacama is the only place on Earth that I've taken soil samples to grow microorganisms back at the lab and nothing whatsoever grew," said Dr. Fred A. Rainey, a co-author from Louisiana State University, who studies microorganisms in extreme environments.

"During field studies, the team analyzed Atacama's depleted Mars-like soils and found organic materials at such low levels and released at such high temperatures that Viking would not have been able to detect them, said McKay, who noted that the team did discover a non-biological oxidative substance that appears to have reacted with the organics -- results that mimicked Viking's results."

A whole lot different spin than at Ananova and a lot clearer even than the BBC article.

A few scientific rules of thumb Levin ought to remember in the future:

If it reacts like chemistry instead of biology it probably is chemistry.

If you really badly want your experiment to yield a certain result you need to be skeptical of your own tendency to see that result when others don't.

For everyone else, those of us that use science for a living can easily tell those that do not AND don't get it. It's too bad America as a whole does not contain a higher percentage of people like those on this board who are not professional scientists, engineers, science teachers, yet understand the scientific process.

see ya