A Cautious 7-Step Scale for Astrobiology, But the Opposite for Earthly Biology

 At a recent NASA page we read the following:

"NASA scientists are encouraging the scientific community to establish a new framework that provides context for findings related to the search for life. Writing in the journal Nature, they propose creating a scale for evaluating and combining different lines of evidence that would ultimately lead to answering the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe?"

The page describes a strategy to avoid some embarrassing fiasco like happened with the notorious BICEP2 study, when scientists announced they had made a discovery of great fundamental importance, only to end up retracting such claims within the next six months or so. The strategy will involve seven steps that must be reached before an announcement will be made that extraterrestrial life has been discovered. 

A visual on the NASA page illustrates the idea:

Credits: NASA/Aaron Gronstal

A paper discussing this "progressive scale" gives us an example of such a scale, from the world of astronautical engineering. Step 1 is "basic principles observed and reported." Step 2 is a "technology concept." Step 3 is a "proof of concept." Step 4 is "validation in a laboratory environment." Step 6 is the creation of a prototype.  Step 7 is the demonstration of a prototype in a space environment. Step 8 is an "actual system flight" in a test. Step 9 is "actual system flight" through repeated non-test operations. 

The paper then discusses a Confidence of Life Detection scale or CoLD, which is illustrated in its Figure 1. On the NASA page the first three steps of this scale are described like this:

"At the first step of the scale, 'level 1,' scientists would report hints of a signature of life, such as a biologically relevant molecule. An example would be a future measurement of some molecule on Mars potentially related to life. Moving up to 'level 2,' scientists would ensure that the detection was not influenced by the instruments having been contaminated on Earth. At 'level 3' they would show how this biological signal is found in an analog environment, such as an ancient lakebed on Earth similar to the Perseverance rover’s landing site, Jezero Crater. "

At the links here or here we read that level 4 is "all known non-biological sources of signal found to be implausible in that environment," and that level 5 is "additional, independent signal from biology discovered."  Level 6 is "future observations that rule out alternative hypotheses proposed after original announcement." Level 7 is "independent, follow-up observations of predicted biological behaviour in the environment." 

It is nice that someone has thought out such a "progressive scale" that should be followed before the discovery of extraterrestrial life is announced. You can summarize the underlying thinking rather like this: "Don't say you can walk until you have shown you can crawl; don't say you can run until you have shown you can walk; and don't say you can make long flying leaps until you've shown you can run."  Or to express the same idea another way, "Don't say you can write words until you've shown you can write characters (letters); don't say you can write sentences until you've shown you can write words; don't say you can write paragraphs until you've shown you can write sentences; don't say you can write essays, articles or short stories until you've shown you can write paragraphs; and don't say you can write books until you've shown you can write essays, articles or short stories." 

It is a shame that such an approach was never used in regard to earthly biology. In regard to their claims about explaining the wonders of earthly biology, our biology professors were very much like someone claiming he can make long flying leaps before he has demonstrated he can crawl, walk or run; and our biology professors were very much like someone claiming he could write books before he had ever shown he could write paragraphs or sentences or single words. 

Let us imagine a Confidence of Human Origins Explanation scale rather similar to the Confidence of Life Detection scale proposed by the NASA scientists. The scale would be a progressive series of levels that must be reached before any credible announcement can be made of an explanation for a natural origin for the human race. We can imagine different levels in such a scale:

Level 1	Good understanding of the physical structure, complexity and organization of the low-level microscopic building blocks that make up an organism, including protein molecules and cells.
Level 2	Good understanding of what causes any reproduction occurring in such low-level microscopic building blocks.
Level 3	Good understanding of the origin of life from non-life, with experiments verifying such an understanding.
Level 4	Good understanding of how a speck-sized human egg is able to progress to become the vastly more organized reality of a full-sized human organism.
Level 5	Observations of visible very complex novel biological innovations appearing, possibly over some long length of time.
Level 6	Good understanding of how such visible very complex biological innovations occurred because of some natural process.
Level 7	Good understanding of the origin of the human mind including an understanding of how memory storage and instantaneous memory retrieval occurs, how consciousness arises, and how humans are able to think, speak and write.
Level 8	Understanding of the origin of human language and writing.
Level 9	Publication of a credible theory of the natural origin of the human species.

The need to follow such a scale is rather obvious.  Specifically:

• It makes no sense to claim that you understand the origin of the human species if you can't first explain how humans get their mental characteristics and mental abilities. 
• It makes no sense to claim that you understand the origin of the human species if you haven't first solved the million-times-simpler question of how a microscopic cell could have first originated. If you can't do experiments demonstrating the origin of life from non-life, then you should very much doubt any natural explanation of the origin of humans.    
•  It makes no sense to claim that you understand the origin of the human species if you don't understand the microscopic parts that make up a human body. 
•  It makes no sense to claim that you understand the origin of the human species if you merely understand how women get pregnant, and don't know how a speck-sized egg is able to progress to become a full human body; for if you don't know that, then you don't even understand the origin of the full-sized body of any adult human being. 
• It makes no sense to claim such an understanding of how a human being is able to reproduce if you don't even understand how some microscopic cell is able to reproduce. 
• It makes no sense to claim that you understand the origin of the human species if you don't know how a human mind is able to arise; for if you don't know that, then you don't even understand the origin of any adult human being.
• If you cannot credibly explain how humans got one of their most fundamental traits (the use of language), then you should doubt you have any credible theory of natural human origins. 
• If there have been no human observations of visible very complex novel biological innovations naturally appearing, then you cannot claim to have an empirically well-founded theory of how novel species such as humans could have naturally originated. 

Did scientists follow any kind of cautious multi-step scale like the one above before declaring that they had discovered the origin of humans? No, they did not.  After Charles Darwin published his "armchair reasoning" works on the origin of species and the origin of man, our scientists triumphantly declared that the origin of species and the origin of man had been explained.  But none of the foundation had been laid for such a claim.  None of the prerequisites had been met. Specifically:

• Darwin had no understanding of the physical structure, complexity and organization of the low-level microscopic building blocks that make up an organism, including protein molecules and cells.
• Darwin had no understanding of how a eukaryotic cell is able to reproduce, something that is still not understood today. 
• Darwin had no understanding of the origin of the first living thing, something that is still not understood today, and cannot be explained by evolution (which requires the existence of life). 
• Darwin had no understanding of how a speck-sized human egg is able to progress to become the incredibly organized reality of a full-sized human organism, something that is still not understood today, because the claim that bodies arise from DNA blueprints is a fiction with no basis in fact, DNA being a molecule that does not at all specify the structure of cells or anatomy. 
• Darwin knew nothing of any observations of visible very complex novel biological innovations naturally appearing, something that humans have never observed. The variations that arise during things like dog breeding are not very complex novel biological innovations, and do not arise naturally but through artificial human action. 
• Darwin had no understanding of the origin of the human mind including an understanding of how memory storage and retrieval occurs, how consciousness arises, and how humans are able to think, speak and write -- all things that are still not understood today.
• Darwin had no understanding of the origin of human language and writing, things that are still not understood today.

In the late nineteenth century biologists followed nothing like formal rules of evidence or a "progressive multi-level scale" before declaring that Darwin had figured out the origin of species and the origin of man.  Our biologists simply hastily enthroned Darwin as their new Isaac Newton. They read Darwin's evidence-scanty "armchair reasoning" and said, "Good enough!" 

What would be the modern-day equivalent of such a thing? It would go rather like this: before anyone had discovered any convincing sign of any type of extraterrestrial life, scientists all over the world would rather suddenly start hailing the discovery of intelligent extraterrestrial life, merely because some man named Jenkins had written books giving armchair reasoning arguing that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists in the center of the galaxy.  Scientists would start lavishly praising the "brilliant insight" of Jenkins, and start hailing him as the new Isaac Newton.