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Comment by agar | Hacker News Reader

As much as I love the concept, I can only imagine what a professional with expertise in cephalopods and their DNA would think while reading this article.

If you've ever read a popular press story in your area of expertise, you immediately see how many things writers oversimplify to the point of absurdity, or just get plain wrong.

I'm guessing the authors of that journal article, were they to read this news story, would simultaneously hyperventilate and strain their necks from the excessive sighing and head shaking.

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This article gives direct quotes from the authors, and the quotes are exciting, (33 authors FWIW)

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/958247/alien-octopuse...

Not entirely sure I can take that site seriously. Their ads seem pretty strongly in the fake news territory.

The original paper is here. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S007961071...

Not sure I can take this paper seriously, either, but it's clear they're taking themselves seriously (in a good way.)

OK, but "gene complexes", not necessarily octopuses, per se.

Not necessarily, true. But these aren't bacteria and this is a whole lotta genes - so life here absorbing so much DNA coherently doesn't sound more plausible than eggs hatching to me. (Meteorites are freezing cold if you touch them right after they land, despite ablating most of their mass on the way down. Or rather, iron ones are - carbonaceous, I have no idea.)

We humans use genes that were delivered by viruses.

We get DNA not just from viruses, but also vesicles. All cells, from humble bacteria all the way to our relatively huge and dynamic human cells, package snippets of DNA to send to other cells.

It's like a message in a bottle, thrown out into the "sea" of our atmosphere. Or an email, and viruses are spam.

Previously on HN:

Cells Talk in a Language That Looks Like Viruses. [0]

800 million viruses fall onto every square meter of Earth every day. They kill 20% of bacterial life every day. [1]

Video simulation of HIV infecting a cell and reproducing. [2]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17005810

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16839636

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16982396

Yes - a bit at a time, I take it whereas some bacteria can swallow whole chromosomes entire (so-called "competence"); so I was skeptical about so much DNA transferring to just one kind of creature, at once.

But now I think about it, the frozen octopi or eggs would bring a lot of alien octopi viruses along with them that might be able to do the job for all I know.

Sure. But this isn't science. It's fiction. Or religion.

If it's not testable, it's not science.

We don't have spacecraft? We never will? It's recently been found that Europa sprays out detectable water to great distances, and that traces of amino acid would be preserved at such temperatures. So we may have one answer re life soon.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/may/14/europa-moon-...

If you're assuming that life from, say, Europa, even if we found it, and it was the point of origin for octopi, would have altered so much as to have no genetic or chemical similarity to octopi now, I have no idea what your evidence is for that. To the contrary, there are plenty of very highly evolutionarily conserved proteins, hormones, etc - melatonin is one (it was originally an antioxidant for one-celled creatures.)

Refusing to entertain hypotheses by reason of expense isn't science.

Well, by all means look for fossils of such alien octopai. But just how would you know that they were alien? Preserved artifacts, maybe?

Basically, I'm arguing that going from problematic features of octopus evolution and genetics to alien octopai is quite the stretch.

You've misunderstood Popper's falsification doctrine - if any experiment (of the hypothesis OR null hypothesis) that risks falsification can be devised, you're on the side of the angels.

You're welcome to say "Yuk! Yukky idea I just hate it!" but don't please don't peddle a false version of philosophy of science instead of just saying that.

You should also be civil enough to mark your change in position in the last missive.

> If you've ever read a popular press story in your area of expertise, you immediately see how many things writers oversimplify to the point of absurdity, or just get plain wrong.

I could have sworn there was a named Effect/Rule given to an extension of this but my googling is coming up short. It was about how you'll read a mainstream article about something you know a great deal about and see how much the journalists got wrong but don't keep that in mind when reading about things outside your expertise. I believe I read about it in the comments here on HN. Does anyone know what it was?

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect defines the idea that "I believe everything the media tells me except for anything for which I have direct personal knowledge, which they always get wrong."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

Slightly off-topic, but boy you weren't kidding. That topic is ungoogleable if you don't know the specific term for it. I spent 20 minutes or so trying various combinations of words trying to get it.

And that kind of irresponsible press also has managed to hinder the progress of science. Take for example Podkletnov's research, which was hastly taken into popular press and caused a halt in the studies (whereas the actual paper was conservative and measured).

Let's blame the scientists who cared so much about avoiding any possible embarrassment that were unwilling to do their job - which was to take the original paper for its own merits. Science funding gets bent away from promising areas for all kinds of crummy, narcissistic reasons. Blame the narcissism, not just sloppy journalism which is eternal and perhaps unavoidable.

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