The Rock from Mars: A Detective Story on Two Planets (Hardcover)

by Kathy Sawyer (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
When geologist Robbie Score spied the little green rock lying on the bluish-white Antarctic landscape on a December day in 1984, she had no idea it would change her life, provoke fierce controversies among scientists around the world and challenge humankind's view of ourselves. Her discovery was the meteorite from Mars that captured the world's attention in 1996 when NASA scientists claimed that minuscule structures deep within it were the fossilized remains of ancient Martian life. As former Washington Post science writer Sawyer relates, the aftermath wasn't pretty. Supporters and doubters quickly circled their wagons and showed that world-class scientists don't always play well with others. Actually, as Sawyer tells readers, the nanostructures were the least convincing evidence for life. Other evidence—equally tiny magnetic structures similar to those made by bacteria here on Earth—was much stronger. Many readers probably are under the impression that the claims have been debunked, but the author explains that using more sophisticated instruments and techniques, supporters actually have bolstered their case, although without future geological samples from Mars, we may never know if life ever flourished or still exists there. This book is an engrossing read for science buffs and general readers alike.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
On Aug. 7, 1996, the war of the worlds began in earnest. At a press conference in NASA's Washington, D.C., headquarters, researchers announced that a craggy lump of rock teemed with evidence of ancient Martian life. If true, E.T. had been found. Even if E.T. were friendly, the scientific atmosphere surrounding the discovery of the rock certainly wasn't. However, it seems that E.T. wasn't friendly. The Mars meteorite press conference sparked a vicious clash between two increasingly entrenched scientific camps. Critics immediately started discrediting the research, and the opposing groups battled for years about the true meaning of the extraterrestrial rock. Nearly a decade later, the wounds haven't healed. The fights were brutal because the stakes were so high. Kathy Sawyer, who covered outer space for the Washington Post for 17 years, adeptly tells the saga in The Rock From Mars. However, the subtitle of her book is somewhat misleading; the story is more "Rashomon" than The Hound of the Baskervilles. There's no "Aha!" moment, no final answer to a burning mystery, no way to know definitively who's right and who's wrong. Good scientists and good journalists have looked at the same data and the same evidence and come to very different conclusions about whether or not the rock once harbored alien life. This much is not in dispute: The rock is from Mars. It crashed down on the Antarctic ice about 13,000 years ago. The inside of the meteorite is dotted with fascinating, carbon-rich orange and black blobs. Upon closer inspection, the rock also contains little grains of iron-based material very similar to those found in some kinds of microbes. And it is full of wiener-like shapes that look like earthly bacteria, only smaller. NASA had found microscopic space sausages. NASA geologist David McKay and his team of researchers took this data as substantial evidence that the rock was once teeming with Martian bacteria. Sawyer's book shines when she describes the team's intellectual struggles; she lovingly takes us into the scientists' laboratories and shows us how they finally reached their jaw-dropping conclusion. Sawyer then shepherds us from the intellectual leap to the political kerfuffle. Once McKay's group decided that they had evidence for ancient life on Mars, events quickly spun out of control. The scientific hypothesis began to take on greater and greater significance as it passed from the researchers to their superiors to NASA administrator Daniel Goldin -- who used the meteorite as a lever to give the struggling NASA a new mission -- and eventually to the White House. However, the tale isn't all rosy. NASA's handling of the press conference alienated a number of scientists who felt that the researchers were being irresponsible with their claim of extraterrestrial life. In the following months and years, critics tore into the McKay team's conclusion and accused NASA of hyping the research. As the case for life in the Mars rock got fuzzier and fuzzier, the debate slowly sank away from the public gaze and away from the mainstream of scientific discourse. Sawyer tells the story well, though her sympathetic portraits of NASA scientists and managers rely heavily on their points of view. This causes some problems with balance. From NASA's perspective, criticism of its work might well seem to be "belligerencies" or attacks laced with "sheer personal vitriol," as Sawyer describes them, but to scientists on the other side of the issue, their comments were justified scientific criticism of a high-profile study. Sawyer's prose tends to bolster one side and undermine the other, occasionally even bordering on ad hominem. For example, anti-Mars-life scientists are painted as needlessly pugnacious: one "antagonist" is "fonder of confrontation than most" while another "did not suffer criticism lightly." It's excusable for a journalist to pick sides in a fight she's studied for so long. Less acceptable, though, is that Sawyer occasionally uses rhetoric to obscure opposing arguments rather than to elucidate them. In the 1990s, she writes, NASA began to present its best science results with "a series of news updates that included video and graphics, dissenting points of view, context, and a tilt toward English over jargon. The perceived success of this approach in attracting media coverage fed a current of indignation among those who considered such efforts unseemly." This is unfair. Clarity and evenhandedness didn't infuriate NASA critics. The nay-sayers were angry because they thought that NASA's PR machine tended to hype scientific findings beyond reason when political stakes were high -- or, worse yet, that NASA tarted up subpar research and presented it to the public as first-rate science in order to justify otherwise unjustifiable spending. John Glenn's shuttle flight and the "world-class" laboratory work of the International Space Station are arguably prime examples. To some, so is the Mars meteorite. NASA is in the midst, once more, of cost overruns and budget crises, and is desperately trying to redefine itself. As the agency presents fascinating news from Mars, Saturn and elsewhere in the universe, seeing how it gets its hands dirty politicizing science would provide an interesting counterweight. Even though this might disappoint some die-hard NASA fans, it would be worth seeing how space sausages are made. Charles Seife is an associate professor of journalism at New York University and the author of three books, including "Decoding the Universe," published this month.

Reviewed by Charles Seife
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Random House (February 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400060109
• ISBN-13: 978-1400060108
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #440,908 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Science vs Politics. (Guess who wins?), April 1, 2006

By	Tom Holzel "Tholzel" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Kathy Sawyer does an absolutely first-rate job of describing what is really a very intricate subject--what is life, and how do we know? The first half of the book describes the discovery of a meteor lying on the snow in Antarctica--which turns out of have been ejected from the planet Mars! The initial investigation of these rocks is cursory and tells little that is new. The rock molders in a museum repository for years--until it is examined again. Suddenly, in a leap of inspiration, one scientist notices tiny features that look strikingly like fossilized microbes--the first signs of extraterrestrial Life!

President Clinton announces the discovery, and the second half of the book describes the intense politicking that goes on as scientists jockey furiously for air time to claim credit for or denounce the sensational discovery. Few books give a clearer picture of the rampant egotism that dominates science just as much as it dominates every other field of human endeavor. So much for the vaunted impartiality of the "scientific mind." (Indeed, please find me a single left-wing scientist who disagrees that humans cause global warming--or a single conservative scientist who thinks they do!)

Why not five stars for this terrific book? Well it is a fine coda to what is surely the best book on extraterrestrial life "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life in Uncommon in the Universe." That's Five Stars worth of reading. (Read it first, and then you'll really enjoy "The Rock From Mars.")

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Story of Big Science, March 15, 2006

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

From movies and television the public has an image of the scientist being a selfless, mild mannered, seeker of knowledge. 'Taint so.

Scientists are people just like the rest of us. They are competitive with each other and with the world at large. They establish theories and points of view that they will defend almost to the death. When an alternative view comes around there is not the dispassionate scientific openness that allows honest discussion. Instead there is a very passionate series of thoughts centered around what this will do to the grants and funding that that scientist has. With that comes money, status, grad students -- all the things that matter most to a scientist.

This is the story of a rock found in Antarctica. First it was just a rock. Then it became clear that it came from Mars. (The evidence is well developed in the book.) Then they spotted things that might indicate that there was or had been life on Mars. Then it hit the fan.

Life anywhere but Earth has all kinds of meanings (for instance to the churches - intelligent design and all that). There could be entirely new branches of biology. The story of proving that this was or was not evidence of life on Mars fills the rest of the book. It was a vicious fight. It's a supurb book.

Was there life on Mars? We really don't know. Even with all the space craft that have visited Mars, including the two rovers, we really don't know.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Human Reaction In the Face of a Possible Paradigm Shift, July 13, 2006

By	G. Poirier (Orleans, ON, Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book is a page-turner! The possibility of having discovered traces of ancient Martian life, no matter how primitive, has sent ripples throughout the (mainly scientific) world. This book gives an excellent overview of the entire story - from the 1984 discovery of this Martian rock in the Antarctic to the present time. As expected, there was much debate about whether the rock did indeed show signs of primitive, ancient Martian life. Consequently, two main camps formed: those trying to prove that the rock did show such signs of Martian life and those proposing alternative explanations for the rock's interesting features. I think that the author has done an excellent job in presenting the story without taking sides in the occasionally heated debates that took place over the years. There are no good guys and no bad guys here, just people trying to understand what had been found in the face of a possible paradigm shift. This book can be enjoyed by anyone because of its clear prose and engaging writing style. Nevertheless, because of its subject matter, it will likely be more popular among science buffs.