Scientist at center of Mars flap speaks out

HOUSTON - Carol Stoker thought she was talking casually to friends at a party. A NASA scientist, Stoker and her husband and colleague Larry Lemke described work they were doing looking for biological activity — life — at a site in Spain called Rio Tinto that may be similar to potential habitats on Mars.

What happened next is up for debate. Stoker says neither she nor Lemke ever implied that her work could be extrapolated to suggest present life on Mars. She certainly never told anyone that a paper to that effect was about to be published in the journal Nature, she says.

Several people at the party, however, later told a journalist that they had said that. The subsequent Space News article set off a brief media frenzy in mid-February that eventually led to a rare official denial from NASA.

The media flap was soon overshadowed by actual news from Mars, but the consequences of that week continue to reverberate for Stoker and Lemke, she says. For that reason, Stoker agreed to her first on-the-record interview since the Feb. 13 party in Washington that started the whole thing.

‘My privacy was violated’
Stoker says she is still shocked that comments made at a private party could become fodder for a news story to begin with.

“What I feel is that my privacy was violated,” she says. “From my point of view, what I had was a private conversation at a cocktail party. … I knew who all the people at the cocktail party were. I knew that none of them were reporters.

“There was a discussion about various things going on in the space program which we participated in. We probably were the only scientists in the room, and we were more privy to what was going on in the Mars community. We said some things that were going on that were not very different from what goes on in [public conferences].”

That was a Sunday. Two days later, Brian Berger, an experienced and well-respected writer for Space News, tried to reach Stoker to confirm what he had heard about her statements at the party.

“While waiting for her to get back to me, I tracked down more people who had heard Dr. Stoker's presentation Sunday night to the group,” Berger said in an e-mail statement to MSNBC.com. “The people I spoke to were all trusted and reliable sources and they gave consistent accounts of what Stoker and her colleague had said about her research and the implications for present day life on Mars.”

“I left two voicemails for Dr. Stoker, letting her know I had heard about her research and wanted to write a story about it, preferably with her help,” Berger said.

Stoker, who was on business travel, says she found the messages only after the article was published the following day. However, she says, even if she had received the messages in time, she wouldn’t have considered them specific or urgent enough to answer immediately.

Nevertheless, she says she feels Berger should not have used her name without speaking to her first. Stoker also points out that “there was lots of ethanol consumed” at the party, which may have contributed to the loss of accuracy of any secondhand reports.

MORE FROM SPACE

Space Section Front

Koreans plan space tours Mars probe's latest trouble: Titanium parts Moon poses radiation risk to future travelers NASA, Google eye tracking climate gases Mars lander just might rise from the dead Cosmic Log: Alien ‘water world’ found Organic molecules found ... on the moon? Hubble spots cosmic Christmas wreath Black hole closer to Earth than thought   Month in space: Powerful pictures Space Section Front   Add Space headlines to your news reader: