NASA says there ain’t no life on Mars

Remember that story about evidence of life being found on Mars? Yes, the same one that made front page news on our beloved Slimes of India. Well, it wasn’t quite true.
NASA just said so. But guess who broke the news before NASA put out its official release? It was the excellent astronomy-related site, BadAstronomy.com.
To be fair, the Slimes of India was not the only one to pick up the news. News sources like MSNBC and Boston Herald carried it too. What really gets egg on the face of ToI is that they didn’t bother crediting the original source, Space.com, for the story. In their usual style, they dispensed with the attribution, making it look as if it was their own story. If they had credited Space.com, they could at least have saved face and passed the blame on to them.
Will ToI print a retraction or follow-up? I’m betting they’ll keep quiet about it.

9 thoughts to “NASA says there ain’t no life on Mars”

  1. LOL!. Nice find.
    Slimes of India, Wake up.
    This may be just one of such cases. There might be hundreds of stories on ToI which have been lifted from other sources.
    Btw, we have to really appreciate their efforts in removing of some text (like, ‘told space.com’, etc, form the original. 🙂

  2. As far as lifting the story goes, TOI was on slippery ground. But the article’s content doesn’t put it in a bad position as such. The very first line says
    “A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here recently that they had found strong evidence that life might exist on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.”
    So, is the publishing newspaper at fault here. No, its just quoting a scientific source and that source shld have egg on its face.

  3. At last, there’s at least one person who agrees that TOI is a scumbag paper. Add to that, the blog writer being atheist brings out the
    closet atheist in me. Good shot across the bows of the paper. Now if
    you’d only go back a few years & write about the vilification of the
    IT Dept. on the front pages over the Ashok Jain forex scandal, that
    would be a bonus.
    Always read the Deccan Herald, the Hindu, Penth…(oops sorry wrong ‘un)

  4. SlimesofIndia has for long been one of the blocked sites on my home PC and the work PC.
    I wish there was a blog that watched the bad writing and journalism on India’s most beloved newspaper. That way, I could just read the bad bits and have a hearty laugh.

  5. I agree with you and TOI has been only an english version of many sensation seeking tamil equivalents.

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