n 1868, at the British Association's annual meeting, the famous biologist Thomas Huxley made public an amazing discovery of his.  He claimed to have found the protoplasm of the simplest organisms on the planet, evidence of the spontaneous generation of life from the ocean floor.  By 1875, however, he became the subject of severe criticism from his peers and had to admit that he had made a serious mistake.  So who was right?

More than a hundred years later, oceanographers may have an explanation - neither were completely right or wrong - a recurring lesson in the history of science.

The original evidence upon which Huxley had based his conclusions, had been obtained in 1857 by a Royal Navy survey ship.  The ship gathered small samples from the ocean floor as it took soundings across the Atlantic, in preparation for the laying of the new telegraph cable.  The samples were preserved in alcohol and it was another ten years before Huxley looked at them closely.   He found shell remnants embedded in a "glutinous matrix", which was described as similar to raw white-of-egg.  He named it Bathybius haeckelii.

In the next few years, other samples were sought and the evidence for this newly discovered organism accumulated.  It was an exciting new discovery of the most basic life-form ever seen, that fitted in very well with the new theory of Evolution.   In 1872 the Challenger scientific survey ship started collecting new samples from the ocean floor, but found no sign of Bathybius.  The chemist on board noticed that some of his samples, which had been preserved in alcohol for a while, showed a transparent glutinous substance.  After some tests, he came to the conclusion that the sea water in the samples precipitated calcium sulfide, when mixed with the preserving alcohol.  In other words it was a completely non-biological, chemical reaction.

This was the interpretation of Huxley's findings right up until the second half of this century.  Then time-lapse photography and further sampling of the ocean floor, showed the seasonal spread of phytodetritus.  The apparently barren deep ocean floor becomes covered in this for a few months every year.  It is not protoplasm of the simplest organism on the planet, but it does sustain a remarkable variety of deep-ocean life for several months of the year.  If you try to obtain samples at the wrong time of year, or with the wrong equipment, you won't
find any.  But it does exist.  This is probably what Huxley discovered all those years ago, at a time when it was widely considered that the ocean floor was completely barren, and was ridiculed for.

It is specifically because the subject was an emotive one - the apparent discovery of a basic form of life - that the scientific evidence was not given proper balanced consideration, by either the protagonist or antagonists.
Prejudiced arguments serve no useful purpose in Science and can delay important discoveries for decades.  If our knowledge of the ecology of the ocean floor had been greater, earlier, we may not  have been so happy to pollute it with toxic waste.

The mistakes of Percival Lowell, and the more recent incidents concerning faces on Mars, has made researchers cautious of making claims about life on Mars.   But does Huxley's story offer a  lesson regarding the Viking and meteorite findings?