JLC to JPL: Huh?

Readers, help me out here: what am I missing about this NASA-JPL press release? (thanks to Phenomena for the tip). I mean, I grok where they're trying to go - investigating OOL chemistry through construction of a hydrothermal vent simulator - but the text feels all jumbled-up! For instance:

"Scientists with the NASA Astrobiology Institute's JPL Icy Worlds team have built this series of glass tubes, thin barrels and valves with a laser and a detector system"

Wait, they built it with a laser? (Must be for the spot-welds)

"They want to see if sending these two liquids through a sample of rock that simulates ancient volcanic ocean crust can lead to the formation of simple organic molecules such as ethane and methane, and amino acids, biologically important organic molecules. Scientists have long considered these compounds the precursor ingredients for what later led to chains of RNA, DNA and microbes."

Hang on just a second, that sounds rather confusing, NASA. I think you mean complex molecule generation paves the way for future complexity. Methane, ethane, and amino acids aren't going to spontaneously assemble into DNA. Ever.

That word, "ancient,"
I do not think it means what you think it means...

"This experiment has its roots in a theory from Russell in 1989 that moderately warm, alkaline hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean could have hatched life about 4 billion years ago. The ancient ocean at these vents contains carbon dioxide, which provides the supply of carbon that could be reassembled into organic molecules."

"Ancient Ocean?" Is there a secret time-bubble hidden deep in the present-day mid-Atlantic? In case you're counting, they use the clunky 'organic molecules' some six times in the release.

"Scientists will alternately send the two solutions through a thin barrel of iron-magnesium-silica-volcanic-type rock that was synthesized by Shibuya..."

A what? A zeolite, maybe? There are so many qualifiers in that adjective conglomeration, I can't even figure out whether it's really a rock...

Source: NASA JPL

Also, PPE alert: If you're showing off your experiment, which is under pressure (100 atm) and heat (near to boiling), wear your goggles! We don't want Jyllian including you in the weekly round-up!

OK, maybe I'm being too harsh. In no way do I mean to impugn the actual science, which seems fascinating, just the strange retelling of it. 

But hang on, aren't these the same folks (NASA Astrobiology Institute) who wrote that "Extraterrestrial Life on Earth" presser just two years ago? We all know how that turned out. 

One would think they'd be very careful wording future releases.

Same (Space) Science, Different (Dino) Day

"Five Acids" -  Duplicated in five papers
(PNAS, OLEB, IJC,  TL, JACS)

For those new to the Breslow #spacedino saga, Paul's collection of links back at ChemBark might be the best place to start. Long story short: a tongue-in-cheek press release proclaiming "Dinosaurs from Space!" drew much (unwanted) attention to a prebiotic homochirality review by Columbia University chemistry professor Ronald Breslow. Astute readers and blog commenters noted that the review text strikingly resembled that of earlier papers by the same author.

Well, just how similar were they? Not to incite a flame-war over "least publishable units" (LPUs), but, inspired by ChemBark's commentary on the matter, I've dug through the last six years of Breslow origin-of-life (OOL) publications, and summed up my findings below (Thanks to Paul, Stu, Chemjobber, Ash, Mark, Unity, Martyn, 'Anon,' and everyone else who provided source material for this post!)

"Transamination" - Duplicated in five papers
(TL, OL, OLEB,  IJC, JACS)

Over the last 6 years, I count nine papers that involve, in some fashion, the following topics: homochirality, prebiotic chemistry, enantiomeric amplification, meteorites, or OOL. Here's a list, with full titles, journals, and authorship:

2006 - Tet. Lett. - "Partial transfer of enantioselective chiralities from alpha-methylated amino acids, known to be of meteoric origin, into normal amino acids." Breslow, Levine
2006 - PNAS - "Amplification of enantiomeric concentrations under credible prebiotic conditions." Breslow, Levine
2008 - Org. Lett. - "Enantioselective Synthesis and Enantiomeric Amplification of Amino Acids under Prebiotic Conditions." Breslow, Levine
2009 - PNAS - "On the origin of terrestrial homochirality for nucleosides and amino acids." Breslow, Cheng
2010 - Org. Life Evol. Biosph. - "Imitating Prebiotic Homochirality on Earth." Breslow, Levine, Cheng
2010 - PNAS - "L-amino acids catalyze the formation of an excess of D-glyceraldehyde, and thus of other D sugars, under credible prebiotic conditions." Breslow, Cheng
2011 - Isr. J. Chem. - "Formation of L Amino Acids and D Sugars, and Amplification of their Enantioexcesses in Aqueous Solutions, under Simulated Prebiotic Conditions." Breslow
2011 - Tet. Lett. - "The origin of homochirality in amino acids and sugars on prebiotic earth." Breslow
2012 - JACS - "Evidence for the Likely Origin of Homochirality in Amino Acids, Sugars, and Nucleosides on Prebiotic Earth." Breslow

"Formose" - Duplicated in four papers
(OLEB, IJC, TL, JACS)

*So, for those keeping count at home, that's "Prebiotic" = 7, "Amino Acids" = 7, "Origin" = 4, "Chirality" = 4, "Sugars" = 4...and we're not yet past the titles!

(Throughout the post, I've also compared similar Figures, a task Paul and other bloggers had started tackling. I've examined each one in the context of the other eight.)

Poring over the text, many of the papers fall into similar thematic traps. First, Breslow poses a "big question" or concept (OOL, homochirality, etc.), then discusses the Murchison "carbonaceous chondritic meteorite." Breslow references the work of Cronin and Pizzarello, and discusses circularly polarized light, white dwarf stars, and synchrotron radiation. The Breslow "formose reaction" paper (Tet. Lett., 1959, 22-26) sets the stage for the D sugars, and the group's transamination / amplification work for the L-AA papers.

"Nucleosides" - Duplicated in five papers
(TL, OLEB, IJC, PNAS, JACS)

Dead-center in the most recent four papers (OLEB, TL, IJC, JACS), one finds the Morowitz equation, which explains enantiomeric amplification from tiny initial excesses of single enantiomers. Unfortunately, one also finds the most glaring piece of self-plagiarism: the kinetics paragraph. As noted by Stuart Cantrill and several others, full pages are duped among the separate articles - TL p. 4229 is identical to JACS p. 5-6, IJC from 992-993, and (almost) OELB from 20-21.

Even the dinosaur joke, that witty aside that brought all the attention to the paper in the first place, was repeated three times! (IJC, TL, JACS). This inclusion almost begs the question . . .did Breslow wish to be caught?

Obligatory dinosaur image
Source: stegosaurus.com

Nonetheless, the offending paper has been removed from the JACS website, and further editorial action likely awaits him. I remain puzzled, however. How could an academic legend, a chemical pioneer, a man whose research has launched quite a few stelllar professorships (Gellman, Schepartz, Groves, Grubbs, among others), simply reissue the same science, over and over again, in different journals? Breslow continually mentions "credible" conditions; was this because the papers were less so? There's also the puzzling publication order, from 'worst to first.' Breslow re-publishes tenuous material from TL (Impact Factor = 2.6) in JACS (I.F. = 9.0), where visibility no doubt increases? Generally, high-impact research starts out in high-impact journals, and later trickles down.

Time will tell what will happen to the #spacedino paper. My final hope would be that aspiring academics and graduate students watch the situation unfold, and take care against any similar publishing behavior.