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chemistry

Hey, I am not trying to force you to edit war with me, so rather than just restore them, could you explain why you would want to delete the references to Nature and the NYTimes regarding the arsenic nonsense? This is not my pet theory and I am not defending it at all - just curious why remove the refs from a wikipedia standpoint. I will look for your answer here. μηδείς (talk) 22:58, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Hey Medeis, thanks for the message. I was just busy starting to write on your talk page to explain in more detail so you didn't think I was editing it to annoy you... I took the refs out because they are secondary refs of the original and don't add further support to what is being said in the article. I kept the NASA page as a ref for NASA funding, and the original article for the rest. The Nature News and NYTimes article are mainly summaries of the original, so they shouldn't be used to give the impression of independent support. They don't corroborate the original, but just report on it. Same with the Redfield 'Letter to Science', that just summarizes the original blog criticisms, so I removed it. I had originally taken out the PHB/water activity statement because it isn't a properly developed theory, but more or less just a single statement in the original paper. I also simply didn't think this would be the right place to go into that much detail, especially since there is a whole article on it, so repeating all that seemed a bit too much. I only added the criticisms to make it more balanced; if I were to write it from scratch, I think there should just be a brief mention with linkouts, something like: “It has been speculated that the earliest life forms on Earth may have used arsenic in place of phosphorus in the backbone of their DNA. Although arsenate esters are so much less stable to hydrolysis than corresponding phosphate esters that arsenic would not be suitable for this function, a heavily criticized 2010 geomicrobiology study supported in part by NASA claimed that a bacterium, named GFAJ-1, collected in the sediments of Mono Lake, can employ such 'arsenic DNA' .” That captures the gist of it, and links out to the relevant articles. I don't have particularly strong feelings about the wording of the article, so do whatever you want. Have a nice day.Rainbowwrasse (talk) 23:43, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. My only concern then would be that a reference remains which is accessible to lay readers. If I get around to it find it necessary I might restore one.00:02, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know, the article will remain freely available at the cited source, so it should be fine.Rainbowwrasse (talk) 11:01, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Re: Felisa Wolfe-Simon lead

I've moved your comment to the article talk page. I will respond there. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 10:02, 10 August 2011 (UTC)