Today's announcement that various simple carbon compounds have been found in soils on Mars studied recently by the latest lander/rover was somewhat anti-climactic given the hype surrounding it. Anyone who's been following the saga of Mars exploration for any length of time would be pleased that organics on the Martian surface have -- finally -- been observed and confirmed.
Now if they could only find all those hypothesized oxidants and hyper-oxidants that were claimed to be sterilizing the surface since the ambiguous biological results of the Viking Landers more than 35 years ago.
As Gil Levin argued and attempted to demonstrate, the Viking results probably indicated the presence of organics and possibly Martian biology, but planetary science politics entered the picture and those indications were set aside in favor of a biologically negative interpretation of the data.
To suggest that the scientific community is suffused with "politics" is, of course, heresy. To go further and suggest that scientific results are not infrequently massaged to fit a pre-determined narrative can be a burning offense. Mars science has been particularly affected by these factors for generations, and given the latest hoopla, that's not likely to change any time soon.
