POPULAR SCIENCE
This should have been Felisa Wolfe-Simon’s moment in the sun. But as the television crew takes positions, the 34-year-old scientist glances at the gray, churned-up lake behind her and gathers her collar around her neck. On cue, she begins her explanation of this lake’s unique chemistry, her voice rising in volume and pitch above the wind.
She’s halfway through the take when the gulls arrive. They swoop and swirl above the shoreline in a swarm, calling in harsh, jeering tones that drown out her carefully chosen words. As the sound technician pulls off her headphones in frustration, director Oliver Twinch halts the taping and ventures a smile in Wolfe-Simon’s direction. “How about we try that one again?” he says.
“I think we’ll have to move,” Wolfe-Simon says, peering down toward her boots. “I’m sinking in the mud.”
It is this mud, and the peculiar microbes in it, that have stuck Wolfe-Simon in the middle of one of the most extraordinary scientific disputes in recent memory. Last December, at a highly publicized NASA press briefing, Wolfe-Simon announced that her research team had isolated bacteria from Mono Lake, on the edge of California’s Eastern Sierra mountain range, that could subsist on arsenic in place of phosphorus, one of the elements considered essential for all life.
Felisa Wolfe-Simon at Mono Lake, California, where she collected the GFAJ-1 bacterium. Her paper in the journal Science, which suggested that the microbe could substitute arsenic for phosphorus, generated tremendous controversy in the scientific community. (Tom Clynes)
The research, financed mostly by NASA and pub- lished initially in the online edition of Science, jolted the scientific community. If confirmed, scientists said, the discovery would mean that this high mountain lake hosts a form of life distinct from all others known on Earth. It would open up the possibility of a shadow biosphere, composed of organisms that can survive using means that long-accepted rules of biochemistry cannot explain. And it would give Mono Lake, rather than Mars or one of Jupiter’s moons, the distinction of being the first place in our solar system where “alien” life was discovered.
But within days, researchers began to question Wolfe-Simon’s methodology and conclusions. Many of them cast aside traditions of measured commentary in peer-reviewed periodicals and voiced their criticism directly on blogs and Twitter. Then, as the conflict spilled into the mainstream, the scientific community witnessed something few would have predicted: meaningful public engagement over a serious scientific issue. For several days, at least, a good many watercooler conversations revolved around the metabolic capabilities of a Gammaproteobacterium. Among academics, the debate devolved into something more vitriolic and personal. One researcher questioned whether Wolfe-Simon and her team were “bad scientists.” Another called her work “science fiction.” One blog post bore the title “Is Felisa Wolfe-Simon an Alien?”
In early June, a few days before going to Mono Lake, Wolfe-Simon and I met at a café in Palo Alto. Standing just over five feet tall, she has curly brown hair and wears a tiny diamond stud in her nose. She ordered an espresso at the counter, sat down, and pulled a digital audio recorder from her bag.
“Mind if I tape this?” she asked.
Tom Clynes is a journalist and photographer whose curiosity has taken him to some of the world's most remote corners. Tom covers environmental issues, energy and science.