Here is a nice piece on the arsenic-based life forms hullaballoo from Slate. I think it's kind of messed up that NASA's press release was:
NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Because, really, that's not what happened at all. If you want to get into the meat of the criticism, see here.
Though often science is not very scientific, at least there is a broad community for peer-review. Even if a paper or a piece of research gets beyond the first gauntlet of getting published, if it's no good, or there are big questions remaining, it will be eviscerated in the science blogosphere, and perhaps a rebuttal will be published in the original journal.
NASA scientists are not commenting.
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