This has been all over Slashdot, but here I go anyway:
It would appear that the US President has been briefed by Phoenix scientists about the discovery of something more “provocative” than the discovery of water existing on the Martian surface.
Whatever it this “big find” is, you can be reasonably sure that it’s NOT gonna surprise anybody in the scientific community. Remember how the water discovery got so hyped up by the media, it was somehow implied that we didn’t already have pretty compelling evidence for its existence for a long time now?
I guess the really sad thing here is that not only is NASA keeping measurement data under wraps from the public (who by the way paid for the mission), it is also going to censor and modify findings to aim for compliance with the views of the religious committee the White House has appointed to stifle science and education:
They have also made the decision to discuss the results with the Bush Administration’s Presidential Science Advisor’s office before a press conference between mid-August and early September.
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that we’re never going to be able to trust anything that comes out of what is supposed to be a mission of discovery for the benefit of the whole world. Which is a damn shame. Not only did we as a civilization mess up our space exploration capability beyond recognition, but the few measurements that we actually get from outside of this world are sanitized and “corrected” for political and religious conformity.
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