"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying." - Arthur C. Clarke

The fact that this came through FoxNews kills all credibility for me

To my memory, all of Fox News' bogus stuff is directly related to one thing: partisanship. I can't think of any lie or mistake they've published that would make me doubt the legitimacy of this article.

They lie, or publish unverified pap, whenever it suits their agenda.

I have no specific knowledge regarding whether, or how, this news article might fit their agenda,

Clearly in this situation it is appropriate to assume that they are lying, or at the very least publishing unverified pap, and to wait for evidence that may indicate they are not.

Edit: As previously posted on hacker news (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2291558), this has a lot of problems.

From Phil Plait's blog (http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/05/h...), the journal is closing, albeit after a conspiracy-soaked rant: http://daviddobbs.posterous.com/journal-of-cosmology-going-o...

Long story short: take this paper with a pretty large grain of salt.

TBH I'm more interested in the social impact evidence of alien life would have, rather than the scientific one.

Evidence of panspermia early in Earth's history would be interesting, but I am not sure it would actually teach us much. OTOH there would be significant implications for some major religions.

Religions would only be impacted by intelligent life. Bacteria and even higher animals would not do anything.

Pfff. Religions are flexible. They will cope with everything you throw at them. They must be, their lifetime is measured in centuries.

Not sure why people downvote posts like the parent. It’s a legitimate concern, given Fox’s well-documented, even engineered and policy-based, science-negative and ratings-over-truth slant.

Would the comment be downvoted if it said “The Sun” instead of Fox News? Fox is hardly a tabloid but it’s certainly not Nature.

I downvoted it because coming through Fox News or The Sun has no impact on its credibility, since Fox News is not the primary source. Fox News is just parroting and simplifying something scientific-sounding, like they would do for any similar scientific-sounding thing. The findings do not seem particularly credible, but it has nothing to do with Fox.

"Fox News is just parroting and simplifying something scientific-sounding, like they would do for any similar scientific-sounding thing."

umm.. this is EXACTLY my point

Coming from Fox News certainly doesn't make it much more credible. But I don't think it makes it less credible, either. You should figure out whether it's credible based on other evidence. If you think that coming from Fox News "kills all credibility" of something then you are going to disbelieve many true things.

WRT to alien life, FOX has an established reputation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_autopsy#Alien_Autopsy:_Fa...

I can still remember my father sitting me down and explaining to me how this was going to change _everything_ about our understanding of the universe.

While my father should have exercised more incredulity, it was pretty irresponsible of FOX to pump the damn program for as much attention as possible.

Certainly not defending 'Alien Autopsy' or FOX News in general as reliable science resources... but that was on FOX TV. It aired in 1995 and FOX News Channel was not established until 1996.

Fox also aired the X-Files! Talk about an agenda!

The journal's website[1] doesn't exactly inspire confidence either. It drops a lot of names and then takes submission fees using PayPal.

[1] http://journalofcosmology.com/About.html

If I got a dime for every time NASA scientist has found alien life...