Just a couple of days ago, mushrooms growing on mars were all over different websites including the Daily Mail that reported scientists made a "pretty wild claim" that fungi indeed, were alive and well on the Red Planet.
A CNet report said, reports in different websites had been interesting, imagining existence of fungi on the Red Planet or Venus. It would literally rewrite one's idea about how life is in the cosmos although the articles rarely tackled the scientific evidence for the so-called wild claims.
The center or at times, off the side of these controversial claims, is Rhawn Gabriel Joseph, also known as the Space Tiger King.
Based on his BrainMind webpage, Joseph is described as a lapsed neuroscientist, a major contributor to the field of neuroplasticity during the 1970s decade.
For over 10 years, Joseph has published on his website, claims about life on other planets, as well as in what this report describes as pseudo-scientific journals the Space Tiger King is overseeing.
The 'Mushroom on Mars' Paper
Joseph's assertions are at times, making it to the big leagues and spill over into the media although, for the most part, they have not been printed in scientific journals, or been inspected and examined by other experts in the field of space science.
However, middle of this week, the claims of Joseph made it into the Advances in Microbiology journal, which, according to Nature, is a comparatively doubtful journal published by Scientific Research Publishing, which is based in China hand has formerly been caught out for republishing scientific literature.
The said journal has been accused of being a predatory publisher with scientists being charged with fees to be published in its journals minus investigating the submitted papers' quality.
The new paper entitled, Fungi on Mars? Evidence of Growth and Behavior From Sequential Images, and is currently accessible on ResearchGate, is a rehash of some of the old discussions about life on Mars, reportedly, through the use of an inaccurate approach to draw its conclusions.
For the most part, the Space Tiger King, together with his co-authors used images that the NASA rovers were able to capture and drew red lines and arrows to emphasize features that they believed matched to fungal growth.
According to developmental biologist Paul Myers, from the University of Minnesota, Morris, who followed the work of Joseph in the past, claiming that mushrooms are growing all over the Red Planet is an unusual claim that needs better evidence compared to an evaluation of photographic morphology by a known crank who has claimed, based on a similar sort of analysis that he has observed fields of skulls on Mars.
'Unscientific' Theory
One of the major problems in publishing about the claims of Joseph, this report specified, is allowing the so-called "bad science" to be publicized.
This global health crisis has shown the public that misinformation can be dangerous, wearing away the confidence in the field of science, as well as in scientists and institutes.
It has been repeatedly seen, how flawed reports can go viral or trending, and then be used later to suggest that researchers are back-flipping on past claims.
To be clear, in this particular issue, there is no backflip. Most scientists agree that the conditions on the surface of Mars are not ideal for fungi to grow.
Astrobiologist Brendan Burns, from the University of New South Wales in Australia, said, all available evidence has suggested that Mars' surface is not welcoming to life.
When publications are promoting unscientific "mushrooms on Mars," theory minus critique, added the astrobiologist, it can be impairing for scientists like her, as well as organizations like NASA, who are trying to find legitimate indications of life outside Earth.
Related information about mushroom on Mars is shown on RT America's YouTube video below:
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Check out more news and information on Mars on Science Times.
