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Life
Several recent scientific findings, including signs of life on an exoplanet and ‘de-extinction’ of the dire wolf have caused a stir but when a claim seems too good to be true it probably is
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Enter the Royal Society in London – the UK’s national academy of science – and you will see a three-word phrase: “nullius in verba“. This motto, held for over 350 years, translates to “take nobody’s word for it”, meaning science cannot simply be taken on trust; it must be backed by evidence.
But what is evidence? Here, things become murkier. A claim that the sky is blue requires little to back it up, as anyone who is able to see it for themselves can attest. Start claiming that the sky is purple, however, and you had better come armed with a good explanation for why we have never noticed this before.
Another motto, attributed to the astronomer Carl Sagan, sums up this varying scale of proof: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. As we report in this issue, some recent high-profile examples have fallen far short of this.
The first would be close to Sagan’s heart: last month, astronomers claimed to have found evidence of a gas potentially produced by alien life on a distant exoplanet, but a reanalysis of the data suggests they may not have detected anything at all. Meanwhile, we report strong criticism from the International Union for Conservation of Nature of the claim by biotech firm Colossal that it has “de-extincted” the dire wolf.
The job of science, as always, is now to dig deeper in the hope of uncovering the truth
Many are excited by these claims and would like them to be true, but, unfortunately, they are not. We take seriously our duty to accurately report strong claims, as demonstrated by our story about a proposal that light doesn’t have wave-particle duality, but is actually solely a quantum particle.
This truly is an extraordinary claim, attempting to overturn a century of physics consensus. As we make clear, the evidence supporting the idea is currently lacking – but physicists are intrigued enough to continue investigating. With no clear reason for why the proposal is wrong, the job of science, as always, is now to dig deeper in the hope of uncovering the truth, or, at least, our best approximation of it.
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