Or not reward the lead investigator with a trip to space? That would be a good start.

This is exactly how to encourage the continuing falsification of data and academic misconduct. The project head is NEVER involved in the actual writing, that's left to more junior staff. So to say "oh he didn't actually write it, even though he was the overall lead and personally responsible for the integrity of the study conducted, so we'll reward him with time on the ISS".

Not having personnel with the necessary competence to complete the study which you received significant amounts of funding to carry out is not an acceptable excuse. This is a slap in the face to anyone who values the integrity of scientists and sends a clear message to anyone who leads large studies that you can allow as much misconduct as you want so long as you don't actively participate. It's like saying that a head of a factory releasing toxic waste into the sewage isn't responsible cos they weren't the ones who turned on the taps... It's a disgrace

Just look at the two most recent citations - him and only him. This is something he came up with and published in low tier journals as the sole author. That means that it's not definitely wrong but it's likely an obscure theory that nobody else thinks is likely hence the sole author in not great journals. I wouldn't over think it, as it's hardly something that has a lot of academic support behind it

It shows an inability to relate to someone else's viewpoint that there may actually be a positive. It is in itself a selfish quote about how selfish people who are determined to wallow in their own self pity can erect walls that prevent do-gooders who try to find the best in things from helping you

But hey, if you share something with someone and their positive attitude makes you feel uncomfortable you can just tell yourself this over and over again but what you're really saying is your comfort in believing there is no positive so you can think woe is me how hard is my life is more important than the reality that there is actually a positive

They really know how to sell an image far above and beyond any science that it may or may not contain. It also might not be a solar system at all, but we'll never be able to tell because to us this process will remain stationary in time, never knowing what it may or may not ultimately form. The whole mystical ooohhhhh maybe it's got their own versions of jupiter and saturn and life on the third rock from the moon... Ugh, it's so unscientific to blindly assume that it could or would be anything like our solar system at this point that it's sickening.

You can't generalise from one icy moon, the only sample you have anything more broadly. All you can say is that specific moon formed in that specific manner with these kinds of heavier elements that wasn't quite right in terms of the environment. Maybe that's the odd one out, maybe all other icy moons are teaming with life but you'd just assume based on a single moon orbiting a single planet in a single solar system that nup, none of them do.

If you did find life it would be strong evidence that it doesn't matter where you are so long as you have roughly the right stuff lying around life will spontaneously develop. Does any credible scientist truly believe its likely? No. Not based on life on earth which all stemmed back from a single common ancestor suggesting that even on earth, a place that was once teaming with life everywhere. If we only had one instance of life that survives on this awesome planet that was once able to sustain amazing amounts of life, then it's extremely unlikely you'd find conditions to sustain life. But we don't know for sure so I guess we have to find out and sell it like it's plausible or the public would never buy it. Don't let the fact that under the most ideal conditions, here on earth, there was only one instance of successful life, only one time in the planets history did functional life develop dull the dream that it could actually just be everywhere, but that's all it is, a dream.

Finding it would be amazing, cos the chances are so slim, but if we don't find it we learn nothing except that life doesn't spontaneously appear everywhere which seems kinda likely given we have this perfect planet but only once did functional life develop.

How will it teach us a lot about extraterrestrial life if it's barren?

Where are all the people claiming clear evidence of alien racing cars on the surface?? Given the number of claims that there must be alien civilisations based on images of innocuous things on Mars I'd have thought they'd be coming in droves...