In case no one noticed it, Charles Seife reviewed Kathy Sawyer's new book, The Rock From Mars, over the weekend in The Washington Post's Book World.

I read the book a few weeks ago and I read the review and I thought the review was pretty weak. The reviewer wanted the book to be more about NASA brass overhyping the news, but I just can't see that as being anything but a minor part of this story. This is a long running controversy and NASA brass were involved for months rather than years. When NASA brass first heard what was submitted, the intital decision was to do nothing at all until the paper got accepted. The more interesting questions are the actual science and was some of it conducted outside the norms of vigorous scientific debate. I think the book is not entirely successful in these areas. The basics of the scientific side seems to be covered but I think it strayed a bit too much into "he said this, he said that". The issues about the conduct are treated very indirectly. McKay admits to being somewhat oversensitive and maybe a bit paranoid right after the paper came out. Unnamed scientists are claimed to have said that Schopf went over the line. Very few of these broad statements are connected to specific events that would allow the reader to judge whether the statement is a fair conclusion from the actual events. Overall McKay comes off as maybe a bit too defensive, but trying to get to the real truth. Schopf comes off as arrogant and maybe deserving of being knocked down a peg. Andrew Steele comes off as the voice of reason and the one who really sees the big picture. I'd be very interested to hear if people with actual knowledge of these events think this comes at all close to reality.

One last comment. I thought the part where Washington politics came into play was very interesting and kind of funny. Scientists focused on their thing intersecting with politics and meetings and even scandal. I did find myself being a big nostalgic. Gee imagine a time when we had a president and a vice president who could contribute substantially in 3 hour meetings with scientists and have the scientists walk out impressed. Even more unbelievable is to think there was a time when even tabloid newspapers put some effort into determining whether the story someone was trying to sell them was the truth!