Lost for over 100 years, World War 1 era US submarine found along with bomber that sank in same area in 1950
USS F-1 Tragedy
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In a historic deep-sea expedition off the coast of San Diego, researchers have captured stunning, never-before-seen imagery of the U.S. Navy submarine USS F-1 , which sank on December 17, 1917, following a fatal collision during a training exercise. The accident claimed the lives of 19 crew members, whose final resting place has now been thoroughly surveyed and documented using state-of-the-art underwater technology.The high-resolution images of the World War I-era submarine were taken during a joint research expedition conducted from February 24 to March 4, 2025, by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and several interagency partners, including the U.S. Navy, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC).Using advanced deep-sea imaging tools such as the human-occupied vehicle (HOV) Alvin and the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Sentry, researchers successfully located the submarine more than 1,300 feet (400 meters) below the surface.The mission also captured detailed imagery of a U.S. Navy Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber that crashed nearby during a training flight in 1950.'Advanced ocean technology and simple teamwork played a big part in delivering these new images,' said Bruce Strickrott, senior pilot of Alvin and manager of WHOI's Alvin Group. 'As a U.S. Navy veteran, it was a profound honor to visit the wreck of the F-1 with our ONR and NHHC colleagues aboard Alvin.'The discoveries were made during a scheduled training and engineering dive intended to test equipment and develop new deep-sea research techniques. Alongside the technology trials, the expedition served as a somber reminder of the risks faced by sailors past and present.'It was an incredibly exciting and humbling experience to visit these historically significant wrecks and to honor the sacrifice of these brave American Sailors,' said Brad Krueger, underwater archaeologist for the NHHC, who completed his first dive aboard Alvin to visit the F-1 site.The USS F-1, originally conducting a 48-hour performance test, was lost when it collided with the USS F-3 in dense fog. Only three crew members survived. More than a century later, the wreck has been found lying intact on its starboard side, remarkably preserved by the deep-sea environment.To honor the fallen, a remembrance ceremony was held aboard the research vessel Atlantis, where the names of the 19 lost sailors were read aloud, and a bell rang 19 times—once for each life lost.'The Navy has a solemn responsibility to ensure the legacies of its lost Sailors are remembered,' said Krueger. 'History and archaeology are all about people, and we felt it was important to read their names aloud.'Advanced imaging tools, including multi-beam sonar and high-resolution cameras, enabled the creation of 3D photogrammetric models of the submarine and bomber wrecks. These reconstructions provide not only educational and historical value but also serve as crucial training assets for future oceanographic missions.'We were careful and methodical in surveying these historical sites so that we could share these stunning images, while also maintaining the reverence these sites deserve,' said Anna Michel, NDSF chief scientist and co-lead of the expedition.
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The Hindu
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Peer review in public To the people at large, the prospect of arsenic life hinted at alien biochemistry. But for many scientists, the GFAJ-1 paper raised more questions than answers. Critics began pointing out that arsenate is unstable in water, so its role in DNA seemed chemically implausible. 'If true, this would have overturned nearly a century of data, but nothing in the chemistry suggested it was possible,' Steven Benner, an early critic and chemistry professor at University of Florida said. Others were initially intrigued. 'I was very excited and impressed. It was a big deal in the origins community,' Adamala, then a graduate student, said. But like many, her enthusiasm waned as flaws emerged. Microbiologist Rosemary Redfield became a leading critic and one of the first replicators to disprove the findings. 'It's a fine example of how easy it is for scientists to be misled by an attractive hypothesis and of why we need both formal peer review and informal outside scrutiny.' By late December, the backlash gained traction. Blogs and Twitter (now turned the paper into a case study on post-publication peer review. Sheila Jasanoff, professor of science and technology studies at Harvard, noted that while such public spaces can foster valuable crowd-sourced peer review, they also risk overreach. 'These days science, like true crime, has spilled outside the constraints of officially authorised review. However, like all forms of democratisation, such informal policing can run out of control if it is driven by a mob mentality that is out to shame or undermine a researcher or a research program.' The original team stood by their findings — but by now the tone had shifted. Evidence falls apart Over the next 18 months, multiple labs tested the paper's core assertion. In 2012, Science published two studies that refuted it. Redfield's team found no arsenate in GFAJ-1's DNA. Tobias Erb's group confirmed the microbe still needed phosphorus to grow, i.e. it hadn't rewritten biology, just tolerated low-phosphate conditions. Wolfe-Simon maintained that her team's methods showed arsenic was incorporated into DNA and were robust enough to rebut Benner's contamination claims. Science didn't retract or flag the paper, saying claims should be resolved by further research, not editorial action. And since no fraud was alleged, the rebuttals sufficed. 'The whole debate ends up circling around the semantics of words like 'error', 'fraud', 'misconduct,'' Oransky said. 'But this paper, let's be honest, has been understood as unreliable since at least 2012, if not earlier.' Why science took so long For Benner, the GFAJ-1 paper reflected differences in scientific perspectives. Biologists saw phosphorus as essential, chemists knew arsenate's instability, geologists accepted mineral substitutions, and astrobiologists embraced radical possibilities. 'It wasn't that reviewers were incompetent,' Benner said. 'They just didn't all speak the same scientific language.' He saw another deeper flaw. NASA's astrobiology community often relies on consensus panels that falter when no one challenges ideas outside their domain. 'Multidisciplinary science is essential,' he said, 'but when it's superficial, weak claims slip through. This wasn't peer review breaking down: it was different communities assuming they shared standards while working from very different assumptions.' Adamala echoed this concern: 'Young scientists in interdisciplinary fields should embrace continuous peer review, as reliance on collaborators' expertise can miss flaws that later scrutiny might catch.' Correction sans closure 'They're right to retract a paper whose high-profile conclusions were entirely wrong,' Redfield said. One senior researcher noted that the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, which many journals have adopted as a measure to improve research integrity, justify a retraction if the findings are unreliable. Here, multiple labs found phosphate in the arsenate medium, undermining the paper's core claim that the microbe grew by substituting arsenic for phosphorus. 'The growth experiments at the heart of the paper were flawed,' the researchers said. 'Even if it was an honest mistake, the core conclusions didn't hold up.' Adamala said that it's a good example of self-regulation in science. 'Slowly but surely, mistakes do get corrected.' Oransky was more measured: 'Science is now acting on an expanded definition of retraction that's consistent with what's been possible for a long time, but rarely used.' Not everyone sees it as black and white. Jasanoff warned that retractions can erase the very messiness that makes science work. 'Rather than draw hard lines between truth and error, science advances through open debate,' she said. 'It's better to preserve a record that shows how scientists test, challenge, and refine their ideas, even when plausible claims later prove wrong.' Benner, for his part, expressed worry that broadening retraction policies could weaken the informal scrutiny that exposed the paper's flaws, raising questions about balancing error correction with preserving the scientific process. Today, the whole saga has transformed into a cautionary tale. Adamala said the controversy may have cast a shadow over exotic chemistry research in astrobiology, making scientists more cautious about bold claims. Who pays the price? Wolfe-Simon's rise and fall was swift. In 2010, she was hailed for a potential revolution in biology. Two years later, she quietly exited both NASA and mainstream science, her research career derailed by controversy and lack of funding. 'Good scientists would have responded by getting back into the lab and doing the necessary follow-up work. But these authors still don't admit mistakes,' Redfield said, pointing to their rebuttal letter in response to the retraction. Ariel Anbar, a coauthor of the now retracted paper, said, 'Science cited no misconduct or specific mistake. We stand firmly by the integrity of our data.' He also criticised the journal for not sharing a blog post it published regarding the retraction with the authors, calling it a breach of COPE guidelines. Oransky disagreed: 'What guideline is this referring to? Furthermore, standing by your data doesn't mean there aren't errors in it.' Anbar also said the team rejected 'the alleged error' and that it was raised in 2011 and rebutted in a peer-reviewed exchange. 'They may reject it,' Oransky replied, 'but that seems to be the rationale for the retraction.' Nonetheless, Oransky also said Science's retraction notice could have been clearer. He explained that retractions often imply misconduct, so when Science called the paper unreliable but not unethical, it still put the authors on the defensive. 'You can see that here, they're saying: 'But there was no misconduct. No clear error.'' Jasanoff said she doesn't see it completely as an individual failure. She argued that the unusually long delay until retraction may reflect less a concern with scientific uncertainty and more with a broader institutional tendency to manage reputation, especially in an era of heightened fears over misinformation. Wolfe-Simon's arc underscored a stark truth: high-risk discoveries bring both acclaim and vulnerability. When science goes public, its failures play out just as visibly as its triumphs, leaving lasting questions about how to correct course without crushing the people behind the work. A slow machine Peer-reviewers cleared GFAJ-1 and media hype propelled it, but shifting editorial norms more than new data undid it 15 years later. Oransky singled out Science's editor-in-chief, Holden Thorp, for leading that shift. 'Other journals have done it, but he's been consistently engaged in a way that encourages open conversation, no matter whether people agree with specific decisions or not.' That kind of editorial openness, he added, may be the real legacy of the arsenic life saga. Jasanoff, however, cautioned that every retraction risks erasing the visible, iterative debate that builds trust. 'It is better for people to understand that science moves through trial and error, and gradual self-correction. It is not a binary. All science is provisional.' Benner drew a parallel to the 1976 Viking missions, where a premature 'no organics, no life' verdict in Science stifled debate. 'Calling the ballgame early had an unfortunate result. It prevented the dialectic the scientific process needs.' The arsenic life case endures not because of its flawed claim, but for what it revealed about the pressures shaping modern science: how spectacular findings — especially from institutions like NASA — can short-circuit scrutiny, and how correcting course means confronting the very systems that made such claims irresistible in the first place. Anirban Mukhopadhyay is a geneticist by training and science communicator from Delhi.
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