The conduct of science

I have an article published in The Economist's Babbage blog. Here's the blurb:

Most scientific research is about incremental improvements to existing theories. Every so often, though, an anomaly shakes things up, offering upstart ideas the chance to dislodge reigning ones. Sadly for NASA, who attempted to do such a thing, the glory did not last for very long. In what has come to be known as the #arseniclife controversy, researchers around the world used blogs and Twitter to highlight the flaws of the NASA study. The implications of their actions have important lessons for the conduct of science... read more.

Here is a list of main references:

1. Wolfe-simon et al., Science, 2011
2. Reaves et al., Science, 2012 
3. Erb et al., Science, 2012
4. Scientist in a strange land, Popular Science 2011
5. Redfield on NASA's claims, RRResearch 2010
6. Redfield's paper on arXiv, 2012