90 is NOT "the new 50"

Susan Jacoby, whose mother is 90 and grandmother lived to 100, tells us it 90 won't become the new 50 anytime soon, and offers other wisdom from the retirement cusp of the Baby Boom — wisdom you probably won't hear from the rest of her cohort.

Sixty-five-year-old Susan Jacoby says she hopes she doesn't live as long as her 90-year-old mom, noting that our incremental increases in average life expectancy have more and more elderly dealing with chronic pain and such.

And, it's not just that. She notes all the other problems facing the aging Boomers.

As I listed them elsewhere, they include:

Laid off. Forced to take lower-paying jobs. Still holding mortgages, which may be underwater. Stocks and 401(k)s that tanked in the recession. Some serious stuff.

That and more that the newly-retiring start of the Baby Boomer aging wave is all listed here.

Who wants to live to be 90 on Social Security and modest other benefits that are slowly trickling away, or that have to be spent down before Medicaid starts covering nursing home care?

Obama - Indian lover or Indian giver?

Don't believe all the rhetoric about President Obama's recent "Indian summit." His pledge to never forget Native Americans only applies to federally recognized tribes. If you ain't one of those, and can't get through the federal government's byzantine hoops (hoops that the Obama Administration has given no indication it plans on making easier), you're still just as SOL as before.

Official federal nonrecognition is probably most common in California, I am guessing, followed by New England, but it happens all over the country. And, no, it's not just about the right to build an Indian casino. It covers Indian Health Service issues and much more, such as issues over traditionally sacred sites.

Here's a specific example of a tribe that's hurt by nonrecogition. The Houma of Louisiana are state-recognized but NOT federally, and so can't (so far) get any special help for Deepwater Horizon-related damaged.

And, the idea that the federal government has ultimate power over this? It's a bit like old Southern state governments defining people as black on the one drop of blood rule, except now, it's defining that people aren't Indians.

And, it's "ironic," at least, that America's first black president apparently doesn't have a big problem with this.

Rosenthal gets principled on MLB HOF and roids

Ken Rosenthal, as a HOF voter, rightfully hates what the Steroid Era has done to the voting process. So much so that he vows to not vote for anybody in their first year of eligibility. That might be a bit harsh, but, I can understand it. And, he's right that the players' union, which includes the affected players, bears part of the burden of blame.

As for his ballot this year, he's still too much a maximalist for me and, I don't think Jeff Bagwell used, so I disagree with leaving him off, but Ken's making a principled stand there.

That said, here's who all that principled stand might include, depending on these people's likelihood of actual, not just alleged, steroid connection, and the likelihood of them remaining on the ballot more than one year.

Off the different sublists within that list, by my HOF metrics standards, I'd say there's 14-15 people on that list who would deserve semi-serious to serious consideration — if not for being on that list.

Tracy Ringolsby trots out the old "amphetamines in the 60s and 70s argument" to defend admitting roiders. Well, "some people" may say they were of more benefit, Tracy, but others don't. Frankly, too many greenies makes for a jittery batter and REDUCES his skills. And, illicit drug use is a red herring, except noting that the length of his using may have affected Tim Raines, did affect Dwight Gooden and possibly affected Keith Hernandez. That said, Ringolsby is more of a maximalist than Rosenthal. He's a Jack Morris booster, and I think he's being a "homer" on Larry Walker.

Favre to go out with whimper not bang?

Looks like Brett Favre's NFL career may have actually ended on frozen Minnesota turf a couple of weeks ago. He's still not been medically cleared to play from the concussion he suffered against the Chicago Bears.

Of course, the Favre skeptic in me expects a dramatic last-minute change.

And, the real Favre skeptic wonders if he's egotistic enough to come back next year, even if NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, along with the fine for Favre in the Jenn Sterger case, told Brett it would be nice not to see him and his Wranglers next year.

Hubris doesn't always get smacked down; life isn't always a Greek tragedy written by Euripedes. But, in this case, it just may be.

By the way he's handled his multiple retirement teases, Favre has lost chances for a farewell tour that he deserved and more.

Rafael Palmeiro lies like a cheap rug

Alleged or believed baseball steroid users have taken different angles in the court of public opinion (and, in the case of Barry Bonds, in the court of legal record, too).

Bonds has simply clammed up. Mark MacGwire gave a semi-apology, semi-tearful, pseudo-tearful or whatever. Roger Clemens got indignant and had a lawsuit backfire on him. Sammy Sosa forgot the English language, then bleached his face white in an apparent attempt to go undercover.

Meanwhile, nobody has lied about the issue as brazenly as Rafael Palmeiro, apparently, who gets more brazen, if anything, now that he's up for the Hall of Fame.

Here's a good example:

"I had no motivation to take steroids because I was at the end of my career."

Really? Canseco alleges he shot you up a full decade before the end of your career.

Raffy then says he doesn't understand why people don't believe him, and cites his own statistics as part of why he's believable.

"I don't want to take anything for granted, but there was a legitimate chance that I was going to get 3,000,"

I'm not arguing that, myself. I don't doubt Raffy would likely have had 3K hits without juicing. What IS in question is the source of a power surge that, throwing out 1991 as an outlier, began in 1993 at the relatively late age of 28, per your career record and actually got MORE unbelievable as you moved into your early, then middle, 30s. From the age of 30-38, Raffy, you hit 38 or more home runs nine straight seasons. Now, you may not have juiced as heavily as Bonds, but ...

These numbers are ... unusual, at the least, especially the homer numbers:

                                                     
Year   Age  Tm 2B 3B HR RBI   BA  OBP  SLG   OPS OPS+
1995    30 BAL 30  2 39 104 .310 .380 .583  .963  145
1996    31 BAL 40  2 39 142 .289 .381 .546  .927  132
1997    32 BAL 24  2 38 110 .254 .329 .485  .815  113
1998    33 BAL 36  1 43 121 .296 .379 .565  .945  144
1999    34 TEX 30  1 47 148 .324 .420 .630 1.050  159
2000    35 TEX 29  3 39 120 .288 .397 .558  .954  137
2001    36 TEX 33  0 47 123 .273 .381 .563  .944  141
2002    37 TEX 34  0 43 105 .273 .391 .571  .962  146
2003    38 TEX 21  2 38 112 .260 .359 .508  .867  117

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 12/30/2010.

And, as I've blogged before, there's the issue of a healthy star athlete in his late 30s doing Viagra commercials. Is there a reason you might know that much about Viagra? Have to use it?

Interestingly, given Raffy's 3K hits/500HRs and 1,800 RBIs, his OPS+ is "only" 132 and his career offensive WAR ranks only No. 78. Makes you realize, on the OPS+, just how much steroids, and other offensive tweaks, screwed with the era of about 1994-2005.

Bad, or at least breathless, science, by NASA?

Update, Dec. 28: Here's a lot more on how NASA had motive to fluff this bad science. Read the whole thing, to be sure, but this image ought to say it all:
Inside NASA, some employees have taken to wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the letters "WWED," which stands for "What Would Elon Do?" — a reference to SpaceX founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk, the Internet tycoon who invested his own fortune in pursuit of his dream of sending humans into space.
That's an agency hugely afraid for its future, and probably thinking it needs all the fluffery it can get, or do.

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Fact is, as P.Z. Myers, Wikipedia and many other sites noted, arsenic replacing phosphorus in organic compounds, albeit much simpler ones than DNA, isn't even new. As for it actually doing so in DNA, well, the trumpeted NASA experiment doesn't necessarily prove that.

And, NASA's PR machine is still going, in this wire story that connects the iffy experiment to discovery of more habitable planets and more stares:

Meanwhile, more motive for NASA to trumpet itself? Perhaps worries about the successful orbital flight of SpaceX's Dragon. though NASA was kind enough to offer congratulations.

Remember, getting back to the budgetary motive angle, Obama has talked about leaning more on private services to head to the space station.

Update, Dec. 6: If shoddy research controls and mechanics make an experiment bad science, then this looks to pretty officially be bad science. Note to Greg Laden and other "fluffers" - why continue flogging this? Let's see some more posting at Science Blogs and Discover about how this baby ever saw the light of day, instead.

Update, Dec. 7: The Guardian has an excellent roundup of NASA's dissing of all the skeptics and naysayers. Again, fluffers ... more skepticism!

Update, Dec. 8: Slate has an excellent article about how NASA has sponsored not-so-good science AND blown the media coverage issues. And, at least one professor says NASA had motive for this fluffery. But, because of the reason for that motive, it could well backfire:

Some scientists are left wondering why NASA made such a big deal over a paper with so many flaws. "I suspect that NASA may be so desperate for a positive story that they didn't look for any serious advice from DNA or even microbiology people," says John Roth of UC-Davis. The experience reminded some of another press conference NASA held in 1996. Scientists unveiled a meteorite from Mars in which they said there were microscopic fossils. A number of critics condemned the report (also published in Science) for making claims it couldn't back up. And today many scientists think that all of the alleged signs of life in the rocks could have just as easily been made on a lifeless planet.

I didn't think so much about that as budgetary motives, but it makes sense. No big news from Mars probes for a while. Obama announces budget cuts and mission changes. The next planned shuttle flight keeps getting shoved back.

Yep, that's motive.

First, contra the breathlessness, at Gizmodo AND elsewhere (see below) — don't tell me that just because Gizmodo isn't a science site, that NASA had nothing to do with "framing." The evidence for that is becoming more and more clear, despite someone like Greg Laden at Scienceblogs, an unrepentant fluffer here and here. That said, Greg's definitely lost credibility in my eyes over this issue.

But, per the first of his linked blog posts:

I've asked for specific critiques of the NASA press release and have received one, which makes a good suggestion but hardly demonstrates that NASA lied or cheated or flim flamed.

You, on the other hand, are quickly making it onto my list.

I never said, myself, that NASA "lied or cheated." I didn't use the phrase "flim flamed" [sic] for its fluffery, either. But, if that's what you think fluff PR for apparently shoddy science should be called, OK!

The New York Times and Phil Plait both also, among others, seem to have gotten a bit breathless.

Second, it's simply untrue that it "doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth." As this Wikipedia page points out, arsenic substitution in some "sugars" in some bacteria is well-known. And, for readers who criticize Wiki, before this story, the three footnotes on the arsenic section prior to this story come from the University of Minnesota, NIH, and New Scientist. Got problems with all of them, too? Beyond that, Pharyngula, in his post about the NASA story, also has information on how arsenic in organic compounds is nothing new.

Third, I don't get why people have a blanket condemnation of Wikipedia. On current events/politics/living history, YES. But, in general, in the natural sciences, in more ancient history, and many other areas, Wikipedia is pretty reliable.

Fourth, ff NASA is using the same language as the Gizmodo post is, or left itself open to this, then, we're going past breathless science and getting close to bad science. That's what you get for hyping something you embargo, too, BTW.

Meanwhile, the PR should be labeled bullshit, not just breathless. More reality.

The New York Times notes this bacterium was CULTIVATED to substitute arsenic for phosphorus; it wasn't "discovered."

The bacterium, scraped from the bottom of Mono Lake in California and grown for months in a lab mixture containing arsenic, gradually swapped out atoms of phosphorus in its little body for atoms of arsenic.

That said, the NYT opens its story with its own "breathlessness":

Scientists said Thursday that they had trained a bacterium to eat and grow on a diet of arsenic, in place of phosphorus — one of six elements considered essential for life — opening up the possibility that organisms could exist elsewhere in the universe or even here on Earth using biochemical powers we have not yet dared to dream about.

It makes it sound like we're still largely clueless about chemical bonds and organic chemistry.

Again, though, this Wikipedia page says we aren't, listing other elements, like boron, in possible exotic life.

Finally, also from the NYT ... the DNA claims haven't fully tested out yet, so this might also be rushed science:

By labeling the arsenic with radioactivity, the researchers were able to conclude that arsenic atoms had taken up position in the microbe’s DNA as well as in other molecules within it. Dr. Joyce, however, said that the experimenters had yet to provide a “smoking gun” that there was arsenic in the backbone of working DNA.

And, still more.

Not quite "breathless," but close, here, as Astrobio's coverage also appears not to have read the material referenced by Wiki and Pharyngula.

The recent discovery by Felisa Wolfe-Simon of an organism that can utilize arsenic in place of phosphorus, however, has demonstrated that life is still capable of surprising us in fundamental ways.

Again, not quite so true.

In short, this is about 1/10 of what NASA led people to expect.

And, Astrobio does redeem itself by citing a skeptic:

Steven Benner, a distinguished fellow at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Fla., remains skeptical. If you “replace all the phosphates by arsenates,” in the backbone of DNA, he says, “every bond in that chain is going to hydrolyze [react with water and fall apart] with a half-life on the order of minutes, say 10 minutes.” So “if there is an arsenate equivalent of DNA in that bug, it has to be seriously stabilized” by some as-yet-unknown mechanism.

Benner suggests that perhaps the trace contaminants in the growth medium Wolf-Simon uses in her lab cultures are sufficient to supply the phosphorus needed for the cells’ DNA. He thinks it’s more likely that arsenic is being used elsewhere in the cells, in lipids for example. “Arsenate in lipids would be stable,” he says, and would “not fall apart in water.” What appears in Wolfe-Simon's gel-purified extraction to be arsenate DNA, he says, may actually be DNA containing a standard phosphate-based backbone, but with arsenate associated with it in some unidentified way.

Given budget cut talks, I honestly wonder if there's an ulterior motive to all this breathlessness. Create an adapted form of life under lab conditions, drop hints that get some tech sites to call it "alien," hint that it might be useful for expanding the search for exobiology ...

And, then, ramp up the push for new Mars mission money or something.

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A sidebar to this story, as written up in detail by Greg Laden, is whether this doesn't open the window to multiple lines of evolution.

I think that's unlikely, even though theoretically possible. Here's why.

Per Nature News, the arsenic-based bacteria were just 60 percent as efficient in growth rate as their original kin. That's a pretty huge efficiency difference. Given that few places on earth, if any, have significantly higher arsenic concentrations than Mono Lake, it would be hard for such bacteria to find an extremophilic location that exempted them from phosphorus-based competition.

Nature News has more on that line of thought:

For example, if phosphate in ATP was exchanged for arsenate, would the energy-transfer reaction that powers a cell be as efficient? In metabolic processes in which arsenate would bind with glucose, would the bonds it forms — weaker than those of phosphate — be as effective? And phosphate groups bind to proteins modify their function, but would arsenate work as well?

All good questions.

And, there's yet more skepticism from Nature News.

First, exactly how is the arsenic working?

To be truly convincing, however, the researchers must show the presence of arsenic not just in the microbial cells, but in specific biomolecules within them, says Barry Rosen, a biochemist at Florida International University, Miami. "It would be good if they could demonstrate that the arsenic in the DNA is actually in the backbone," he said.

Also, he says, the picture is still missing an understanding of what exactly the arsenic–phosphorus switch means for a cell, says Rosen. "What we really need to know is which molecules in the cell have arsenic in them, and whether these molecules are active and functional," he says.

And, how do the arsenic compounds avoid breaking down?

"It remains to be established that this bacterium uses arsenate as a replacement for phosphate in its DNA or in any other biomolecule found in 'standard' terran biology," says Steven Benner, who studies origin-of-life chemistry at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Florida.

Arsenate forms much weaker bonds in water than phosphate, that break apart on the order of minutes, he says, and though there might be other molecules stabilizing these bonds, the researchers would need to explain this discrepancy for the hypothesis to stand. Still, the discovery is "just phenomenal" if it holds up after further chemical analysis, Benner adds. "It means that many, many things are wrong in terms of how we view molecules in the biological system."

So, this needs a LOT more research. It ain't Pons-Fleischmann trotting out cold fusion, no, but, it does seem ... sketchy, so far. (That said, I'll admit that Wikipedia's article on cold fusion is iffy itself.)

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Update, Dec. 20:Arsenic exobiology researcher Felisa Wolfe-Simon is dismissive, and in a wrongly, fudging, sense, concerns about hydrolysis of the arsenic compounds in DNA. Seriously, this has gone beyond breathless; this is indeed bad science.

Per Wikipedia's article on alternative life chemistry, linked above, the hydrolysis issue caught my attention the day of the announcement. Obviously, it caught the attention of science professionals, too, and Ms. Wolfe-Simon is left without explanation, so she bloviates.

Meanwhile, here's proof of NASA's fluffery on the arsenic compound/exobiology story that had nothing to do with alien life - the hed on NASA's announcement:
"Get Your Biology Textbook...and an Eraser!"