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Suzan Mazur interviews senior NASA origin of life scientist

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Origin of Life Circus As Mazur tells it in The Origin of Life Circus,

In a couple of e-mails to me in January 2013, Andrew Pohorille, the senior-most scientist at NASA working in the origin of life field, objected to my story, “The RNA World’s Last Hurrah?”, “The RNA World’s Last Hurrah?”, in which I interviewed Paul Davies’ collaborator at Arizona State University, physicist Sara Walker.

Pohorille seemed furious at story comments doubting the RNA world, although the Walker interview was a Q & A, and I’d quoted the “experts” and linked my interviews with them: biochemist Pier Luigi Luisi, wh characterized the RNA world as a baseless fantasy; theoretical biologist Stu Kaffman hadn’t worked; and Walker, who told me “most of the origin of life community don’t think that’s the definitive answer.”

The story gets better, of course. But that would be telling …

Maybe RNA world survives among pop science writers and high school teachers. That could make up for many defects, no?

See also: RNA world would work if only life were simpler

Comments
Maybe RNA world survives among pop science writers and high school teachers. That could make up for many defects, no?
If Haeckel's embryos are any indication as to how long a failed explanation can survive in the Darwinian controlled world of science, RNA world has a long ways to go.awstar
March 22, 2015
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Some very interesting work on abiogenesis, by the look of it. The proposals by Walker and Davies concerning the role of information in abiogenesis is both intriguing and a provocative alternative to the usual trope of information inevitably pointing to a designer.Seversky
March 21, 2015
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