n e w s of t h e w e e k

able agitation over what it saw as the White House Office of Science & Tech­nology Policy's (OSTP) poor steward­ship of the R&D coordination process. Under Zare's leadership, the board has attempted to be more proactive in ful­filling its original charter to be a critic of national research priorities. But it faced a delicate problem: maintaining goodwill with OSTP. It was widely known, but never publicly admitted, that OSTP Director John H. Gibbons, who prefers to do his priority setting behind closed doors, was not enthusias­tic about the board's enterprise.

Still, Zare appointed board member Ian M. Ross, former chairman of AT&T Bell Laboratories, to head the committee that produced the report. The committee spent several months shaping words that would sound the alarm but not offend.

Zare tells C&EN that the right appara­tus already exists within the White House to do the coordinating. OSTP and the National Economic Council both work with the Office of Management & Budget in deciding how much will be spent in certain scientific fields, such as chemistry, computer sciences, physics, or medicine. But as Zare says, "No one yet knows how to do it between and across disciplines" within those broad fields.

The paper consists of four parts. The first painstakingly tries to differentiate between research and development. The second reviews changes in the R&D po­litical climate that have occurred since the end of the Cold War. The third ad­dresses the dilemma of actually setting priorities, and the fourth reviews meth­odologies that have been or could be used in priority setting—none terribly successful or seriously attempted.

But without specifying who should do it, the board says a new and serious study should be undertaken. And the board says it will be watching the pro­cess closely. This paper, says Zare, "is not the final word nor the end product of this process. It is meant to encourage much-needed dialogue among appropri­ate stakeholders."

A spokesman for OSTP says the report is welcome. "We're glad there are other people there to join the chorus and say we need a more focused R&D policy. Good. Let's link arms."

NSB calls its effort a "working paper"; the paper is available at the National Sci­ence Foundation web site (http://www. nsf.gov/home/nsb/document.htm).

Wil Lepkowski

Meteorite worms: Martian nanofossils or lab gunk?

New evidence suggests that the nanome­ter-scale, wormlike structures found in martian meteorite ALH84001 are merely artifacts from experimental processing, rather than fossilized microbes.

The detailed argument in support of the evidence is presented by John P. Brad­ley, research scientist at MVA Inc., Norcross, Ga., and adjunct materials sci­ence and engineering professor at Geor­gia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, and his colleagues [Nature, 390, 454 (1997)]. It is countered by an equally de­tailed rebuttal [page 455] from David S. McKay, scientist at the National Aeronau-

Tubular structures: processing artifacts or martian nanofossils?

tics & Space Administration's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and other members of the group that originally pro­posed the famous rock held evidence for martian life.

When McKay and colleagues first put forth their interpretation of ALH84001 data [Science, 273, 924 (1996)], they based part of their argument for martian life on the identification of microscopic wormlike features, which they conjec­tured were fossilized remains of nanobacteria.

Nanobacteria themselves are the cen­ter of some controversy. These putative organisms, on the order of tens or hun­dreds of nanometers in length or diame­ter, are believed by some scientists to ex­ist in teeming quantities on Earth. How­ever, others dispute the very existence of nanobacteria, saying there's simply not enough space inside such a small organ­ism for the fundamental chemistry of life to take place.

Bradley and colleagues say they have

evidence that wormlike features in ALH84001 are caused by a buildup of the gold and palladium coating applied to sam­ples before they're observed with a scan­ning electron microscope.

The Bradley group, which has been a prominent critic of the McKay group's interpretation, also includes geological scientists Ralph P. Harvey at Case West­ern Reserve University, Cleveland, and Harry Y. McSween Jr. of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Such artifacts, which have been rec­ognized before by the scientific commu­nity, grow larger with longer coating times that produce thicker metal layers. Recently, emeritus geological sciences professor Robert L. Folk at the University of Texas, Austin, himself one of the pro­ponents of the nanobacteria hypothesis, warned about the danger of "the devel­

opment of nanobacteria-looking artifacts caused by gold coating of times more than one minute" [J. Sedi­ment. Res., 67, 583 (1997)].

Bradley says by imaging the meteorite sample at dif­ferent angles, the wormlike structures can be seen pok­ing out of the side, "like a sheath of papers in which a few pages are sticking up on edge."

NASA scientist Everett K. Gibson Jr., one of the authors on the original martian life

paper, counters that these structures are dif­ferent than those interpreted by his group as nanobacteria fossils. "We were aware of the features Bradley was talking about for several years," Gibson says. "We felt in no way were they related to the others."

Not only are the features his group at­tributes to fossilized remains larger than the artifacts, he says, but an uncoated im­age presented by his group shows fea­tures that Bradley and coworkers say is attributed only to the lab artifacts.

Both Bradley and Gibson say such de­bate is an indication of a healthy scientif­ic process. The technological and scien­tific advances that come from the investi­gation will aid searches for life in future Mars missions, they say.

"Whether we're right or wrong—and we think we're right—the scientific com­munity is going to win on this," Gibson says. Echoes Bradley: "In many ways it shows that science in America is alive and well."

Elizabeth Wilson

8 DECEMBER 8, 1997 C&EN