[Rooki]

I don't doubt his (or her) PHD claim either! The casual dismissal of the work of a team of experts across multiple institutions like this just surprised me, and that parent has a PHD in the field made it even more shocking.

The team that worked on this said they were thorough in going through the possible abiotic pathways that could cause this on a rocky planet like Venus. Now of course it's possible they missed something, like parent says: "There's about eleven bajillion abiotic routes to phosphine". I guess it was a sarcastic remark, but maybe parent really could have saved everyone a ton of time and $$. They're publishing as a starting point for the rest of the world to dig into this now, hopefully someone nails down what's happening one way or the other without waiting on a probe to be sent there!

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> The casual dismissal of the work of a team of experts across multiple institutions like this just surprised me, and that parent has a PHD in the field made it even more shocking.

It's a casual dismissal only because it's a comment on HN, rather than e.g. a review comment in a peer-reviewd journal. Otherwise, that's exactly the kind of reaction one learns to expect when one is doing research. Your work will be criticised. Ruthlessly.

It's not even a bad thing, long-term, quite the contrary. Only work that has survived the criticism of experts in a field can be expected to make a real impact.

And this is really just me being philosophical about it because of course criticism stings and rejection hurts. But you learn to live with it and I think most researchers who have taken a baptism of fire (submitted to a journal- or conference in CS) eventually come to terms with it: people will rubbish your work constantly. Until they are convinced it's good work.

[Rooki]

Generally the paper would at least be glanced at before unloading the criticism though right? Did parent even know how much phosphine they'd found when making the above comments?

[andi999]

Well, maybe he would have saved everyone time and money, but then there wouldnt be a nature publication. I remember a long while ago, the space agency is not too shy to sometimes publish questionable conclusions

[throwaway_pdp09]

You've made your point very clearly, and I can't disagree. Thanks.