# Did people ever figure out what the red rain in Kerala was **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 14, 2006, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367 "2006-03-14T21:59:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/21 "2006-03-15T15:26:16Z")
> [@Testy](#): > > Why aren’t there some biologists kicking the doors down to get hold of some of this stuff? As you point out, astronomers may not be the best people to investigate it. While I agree that it is probably some kind of terrestrial weirdness going on, the slow way it’s being investigated is maddening. > > Regards > > Testy The New Scientist article says samples are being analysed in several other labs. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is a terrestrial source but ‘bats’ is just crazy. I feel interesting anomolous phenomena should be investigated seriously, not dismissed out of hand with ‘comfort’ tales. At one time ‘stones’ didn’t fall from the sky either. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/22 "2006-03-15T15:35:50Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > Consider also how archaeology still ignores the nicotine and cocaine found in mummies in collections all over the world. Transatlantic trade didn’t happen, therefore we are going to ignore these observations. Cecil cays the “cocaine mummies” bit is nonsense, and that’s good enough for me. [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010126.html](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010126.html) Your statement that this has been “Found in collections all over the world” appears to be false. It was found in a few mummies by one group of German researchers. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/23 "2006-03-15T15:51:54Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Cecil cays the “cocaine mummies” bit is nonsense, and that’s good enough for me. > > [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010126.html](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010126.html) > > > [@](#): > > > > Your statement that this has been “Found in collections all over the world” appears to be false. It was found in a few mummies by one group of German researchers. > > Look at the date of the report. 2001. And it doesn’t say what you say it does. > > > [@](#): > > > > The TV show wasn’t a bad piece of work. (You can read the script at www.uiowa.edu/~anthro/webcourse/lost/coctrans.htm.) It gave ample airtime to the skeptics but overall left the impression that Balabanova, Parsche, et al. might be on to something, making a better case for their work than they had bothered to make themselves. > > > > But it was just TV. It’s not the kind of thing scientists normally respond to, and they haven’t. > > > > There the matter rests. According to Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, the Germans’ work has been dismissed by mainstream archaeologists. No discussion of it is to be found in recent surveys of the field. Theories about transoceanic trade in ancient times are considered too outré to warrant serious consideration. > > [Cocaine mummies](http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/ethnic/mummy.htm) > > “The detection of drugs in human hair is a fairly recent endeavor (McPhillips, 1998; Sachs, 1998). A few compounds were identified during the 1980’s but it wasn’t until the 1990s that drug screening via hair analysis became accepted and used as a possible alternative to urine sampling. The criticism that no known cases of cocaine, nicotine, or hashish have been reported in human hair must, therefor be interpreted with clarification. None of these compounds had been observed in human hair because the process had not been fully developed, nor had the application even been considered until quite recently. Even then the claim is not true. “ > > ``` > “Cartwell et. al. (1991) using a radioimmunoassay method detected cocaine metabolites in pre-Columbian mummy hair from South America. In this study two out of eight mummies analyzed showed cocaine metabolites. All samples tested were confirmed by a separate laboratory (Psychomedics Corporation, Santa Monica, California) using GC-MS. The two mummies testing positive were from the Camarones Valley in northern Chile. The artifacts as well as the mummies at this site were typical of Inca culture. “ > > “Since the initial work of Balabanova et. al., other studies have revealed the same drugs (cocaine, nicotine, and hashish) in Egyptian mummies, confirming the original results. Nerlich et. al. (1995), in a study evaluating the tissue pathology of an Egyptian mummy dating from approximately 950 B.C., found the compounds in several of the mummy's organs. They found the highest amounts of nicotine and cocaine in the mummy's stomach, and the hashish traces primarily in the lungs. These findings were again identified using both radioimmunoassay and GSMS techniques. Very similar results were again found in yet another study by Parsche and Nerlich (1995). Again, the findings were obtained using the immunological and chromatographic techniques. “ > > ``` > [@](#): > > “The initial reaction to the findings of Balabanova et. al. were highly critical. These criticisms were not based on a known failing in the authors’ research methodology, rather they were attempts to cast doubt on an implication of the research - that cocaine and nicotine were brought to Egypt from the New World before Columbus. This conclusion is not acceptable to conservative investigators of the past. In fact it suggests a deep-rooted aversion to what Balabanova suggested might mean an unraveling of aspects of history contrary to basic reconstructions. This aversion, according to Kehoe (1998) stems from the conviction that Indians were primitive savages destined to be overcome by the civilized world - that the acme of evolutionary success resided in the conquering race itself. ‘Childlike savages could never have voyaged across oceans.’ “ [Extract from a documentary on the subject](http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Misc/mummies.htm) > [@](#): > > And if that wasn’t enough, it turned out that the results from the Munich mummies were not the only evidence from the dead. The anthropologists who originally ordered the tests didn’t continue the project. **But Balabanova, alongside her normal research into the metabolism of drugs started requesting samples of other ancient human remains from universities. And it was then that she got more results from Egypt.** > > She tested tissue from 134 naturally preserved bodies from an excavated cemetery in the Sudan, once part of the Egyptian empire. Although from a later period, the bodies were still many centuries before Columbus discovered the Americas. About a third of them tested positive for nicotine and cocaine. The point is - the research has been dismissed out of hand on a priori grounds and not followed up. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/24 "2006-03-15T15:53:04Z")
Apologies for my bad coding. ---
**Author:** ![sunfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@sunfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunfish)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/25 "2006-03-15T16:08:40Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > The paper specifically addresses and rejects the ‘dust’ argument on several grounds. Not the least of them being that the writers of that report didn’t examine samples. Do those pictures look like dust to you? See Fig 7. That looks like a cell. May not be, but I don’t think dust has a membrane. > > This study is the most comprehensive to date yet you dismiss it out of hand. > > I don’t know what they are but IMHO your ‘handwaving’ attitude to something potentially new is sadly typical of how science operates when faced with a new and potentially ground-breaking phenomena. On the contrary, I’m currently involved with a group of folks who are extremely interested in astrobiology, and am specifically involved in a project designed to assess habitability of other worlds. I would love for someone to find real extraterrestrial cells. I just don’t think these people have done it. Why not? Well, as I evaluate the paper, the authors are not putting forth arguments against dust as an explanation that are in any way compelling to someone trained in Earth sciences (my own perspective). Their arguments amount substantively to saying, “We don’t think it could be dust, because the red rain fell over a period of 10 days, and besides the dust doesn’t look like dust from Kerala.” What they are not grasping is that while dust clouds can and do remain suspended in the atmosphere for days at a time, and that the source of the dust doesn’t have to be anywhere near Kerala. In addition, the products of a meteorite air burst would fall out of the atmosphere a heckuva lot faster, simply because the particle sizes large enough to survive the burst would be too large to stay suspended in the atmosphere for the length of time they require. Sounds to me like they never consulted with anyone who studies dust transport, which is a bit sloppy. Contrary to what you said, the authors most certainly did examine samples, otherwise they couldn’t have written the paper (see the acknowledgments). Yes, I saw figure 7. I’m not sure how to explain it, frankly, which isn’t a surprise to me because I’m not a trained biologist. But since I’m a geologist, I also looked at figure 4, which looks very much like iron-stained grains of sediment. By the way, there’s no way that figure 4 shows anything at 1000x magnification - they have to be off by at least an order of magnitude. (I have spent plenty of time looking at grain mounts under a petrographic microscope, and know whereof I speak.) They also include no scale within figure 4 (or any of their figures, for that matter), another sloppy oversight that would never be accepted if any geologist or biologist had properly vetted this paper. This sort of sloppiness sets off alarm bells for me, and makes me wonder what other oversights were not caught by the reviewers/journal editor. I also looked at table 1 and figure 14, which gives a breakdown of elemental composition as provided by EDX (not EDAX, by the way; EDX stands for energy dispersive x-ray) analysis. Elemental compositions of particles are not always very enlightening, because they don’t tell you what compounds/minerals the elements are forming. I see the substantial contribution of C and O, which may or may not be forming organic compounds. Another possibility is CO[sub]3[/sub][sup]-[/sup], which is a carbonate ion and a component of limey things like shells but can also become entrained in carbonate-rich dust. I also see a good bit of Si (silica), a basic component of quartz silt, some Na and Cl (suggests aerosolized sea salt), and just enough Fe (iron) to stain and provide some color to the grains. There is nothing in here that could not be explained by some means other than an extraterrestrial source. The onus is on the authors to do what they can to eliminate the mundane, Earth-bound possibilities, and I don’t think they’ve done it here. Okay, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment and say they have some biological material on their hands. Why should the “cells” be extraterrestrial, just because they have no DNA? [Earthly red blood cells have no DNA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_blood_cell), and curiously enough, some of the images in the paper resemble the picture on the Wikipedia page. Then you can go back to talking about a boatload of bats getting hammered from space, and it’s equally plausible _with the level of evidence provided in the paper._ And really, if they truly felt they had biological material, why didn’t they bring in a biologist to help them evaluate the stuff? There are certainly more sophisticated tests one could run on the samples to evaluate their origin, other than the ONE simple procedure followed by the authors. My personal physician is a smart lady, but I wouldn’t expect (or trust) her to classify a newly discovered insect from the Amazon. The authors as physicists are about as qualified to assess the rain samples, in this case. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. This paper doesn’t begin to scratch the surface in providing such. I’m sorry if it upsets you, tagos, but these authors have a long way to go before their hypothesis should expect any real support. ---
**Author:** ![sunfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@sunfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunfish)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/26 "2006-03-15T16:17:21Z")
> [@Testy](#): > > Why aren’t there some biologists kicking the doors down to get hold of some of this stuff? As you point out, astronomers may not be the best people to investigate it. While I agree that it is probably some kind of terrestrial weirdness going on, the slow way it’s being investigated is maddening. Just to address this comment - if you think you’re dealing with something that would turn the world on its ear, the BEST thing to do is take your time and work put as much as you properly can before you publish. Nothing done well in science should be rushed. In addition, I’ll put forth a WAG and say these authors shopped around their paper to more than one journal and got rejected until they came to a journal/editor who was not in the best position to evaluate the manuscript. It happens, unfortunately. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/27 "2006-03-15T16:30:12Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > I don’t know what they are but IMHO your ‘handwaving’ attitude to something potentially new is sadly typical of how science operates when faced with a new and potentially ground-breaking phenomena. Generalize much from a single poster on a message board to an entire field of human endeavor millions participate in? :rolleyes: I’m really disappointed when I see people going on and on about how science suppresses evidence whenever others aren’t bowled over with their pet notions. Just show us the evidence, and if it’s good enough, some people will start to believe it. Don’t whine about how no one buys your story and everyone but you is really close-minded. Back to the OP, the red rain phenomenon has gotten a lot of press, but it’s probably too early to say whether it’s actually extraterrestrial or not. Most interested scientists have probably only recently read the media coverage and haven’t had much of a chance to get a sample to look at for themselves. Let’s see if other specialists come to the same conclusion as these astronomers. Sadly, people aren’t very patient. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/28 "2006-03-15T16:35:24Z")
> [@sunfish](#): > > I’m sorry if it upsets you, tagos, but these authors have a long way to go before their hypothesis should expect any real support. The only thing that upsets me is people dismissing unusual phenomena on a priori grounds as, like with plate tectonics, or Viking colonies in north America - refusing to consider evidence because it doesn’t fit preconceptions sets back science by decades. Offering lunatic theories like exploding bats doesn’t cut it. That’s not science, that’s just ‘don’t bother me with this, I don’t want to look at it.’ Maybe Kerala will turn out to be terrestrial but unless qualified scientists look at the evidence with an open mind we’ll never know. At least these guys are making an effort. Maybe more qualified ones should too. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/29 "2006-03-15T16:36:04Z")
> [@Revtim](#): > > My probablilty wag: > Some non-terrestrial (non-bat) explanation: 95% > the bat theory: %4.9999 > ETs: .0001 You forgot “Rain of Blood,” signifying the coming apocalypse. Make sure you’re in a state of grace. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/30 "2006-03-15T16:37:32Z")
> [@wevets](#): > > Generalize much from a single poster on a message board to an entire field of human endeavor millions participate in? :rolleyes: The history and philosophy and methodology of science is something I know a lot about thanks. I can generalise quite happily from 3 decades of study. ---
**Author:** ![sunfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@sunfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunfish)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/31 "2006-03-15T16:49:44Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > The only thing that upsets me is people dismissing unusual phenomena on a priori grounds as, like with plate tectonics, or Viking colonies in north America - refusing to consider evidence because it doesn’t fit preconceptions sets back science by decades. > > Offering lunatic theories like exploding bats doesn’t cut it. That’s not science, that’s just ‘don’t bother me with this, I don’t want to look at it.’ > > Maybe Kerala will turn out to be terrestrial but unless qualified scientists look at the evidence with an open mind we’ll never know. > > At least these guys are making an effort. Maybe more qualified ones should too. Could you please point out to me where I said it was impossible? All I have done here is point out that, IMHO, the current argument as set forth by the authors is damn weak, and I presented a few of my reasons for saying so. (No one asked me for a formal review of the paper, and I’m not going to do that here.) Since I have told you why, in my experience, the conclusions of the authors is unlikely given the evidence provided, I’m most certainly not dismissing their conclusion _a priori_. And the portrait you paint of these two lonely guys in Kerala being the only seekers of truth in the matter is a bit melodramatic, don’t you think? There is a system in place for evaluating hypotheses, and while it’s not perfect, it does a pretty good job on the whole. The long debates over plate tectonics, Vikings in North America, and the existence of Archaea as separate from bacteria are noteworthy for the fact that they are uncommon in the history of modern science. Don’t try to make it sound as though it happens everyday, lest you begin to sound like Graham Hitchcock. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/32 "2006-03-15T16:59:39Z")
> [@sunfish](#): > > Well, as I evaluate the paper, the authors are not putting forth arguments against dust as an explanation that are in any way compelling to someone trained in Earth sciences (my own perspective). Their arguments amount substantively to saying, “We don’t think it could be dust, because the red rain fell over a period of 10 days, and besides the dust doesn’t look like dust from Kerala.” What they are not grasping is that while dust clouds can and do remain suspended in the atmosphere for days at a time, and that the source of the dust doesn’t have to be anywhere near Kerala. There’s a nice photo of long range transport of Saharan dust here: [APOD; Mar 3, 2000](http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000303.html). Saharan clouds dump spores on the Caribbean. The particles in the article look a lot like [fungal spores](http://www.plantpath.wisc.edu/tddl/tddl/disimg/rust/spores.jpg). I’d not be to surprised to find that there are environmental conditions under which some fungus or other produces lots of DNA free minicells. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/33 "2006-03-15T19:54:13Z")
> [@sunfish](#): > > The phenomenon of “red rain” has been documented in a number of places around the world, For example, by [Peter Gabriel](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/petergabriel/redrain.html) in 1986. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2006, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/34 "2006-03-15T20:29:35Z")
> [@tagos](#): > > The history and philosophy and methodology of science is something I know a lot about thanks. I can generalise quite happily from 3 decades of study. And yet the incredibly obvious step of **asking** people why they don’t find evidence convincing enough is too hard? Is it really better to assume they’ve got their heads in the sand than to read **sunfish** ’s most recent 3 posts or the like? ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/35 "2006-03-16T01:21:17Z")
These articles > **[Red rain could prove that aliens have landed](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/mar/05/spaceexploration.theobserver)** > > The following correction was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday March 12 2006 [http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/exclusives-nfrm/060104\_specks1.htm](http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/exclusives-nfrm/060104_specks1.htm) say microbiologists are looking into it. I don’t know what the findings are yet. ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/36 "2006-03-16T01:53:36Z")
What about algae, scooped up from a body of water (just like frogs/fish get scooped up and dropped)? ---
**Author:** ![Testy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c37758/32.png) [@Testy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Testy)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/37 "2006-03-16T06:30:03Z")
> [@sunfish](#): > > Just to address this comment - if you think you’re dealing with something that would turn the world on its ear, the BEST thing to do is take your time and work put as much as you properly can before you publish. Nothing done well in science should be rushed. > > In addition, I’ll put forth a WAG and say these authors shopped around their paper to more than one journal and got rejected until they came to a journal/editor who was not in the best position to evaluate the manuscript. It happens, unfortunately. [Tagos & Sunfish\*\* Thank you both, but damn it! I really wanted that to pan out. Oh well. As an OBTW, I agree that the bat idea was extremely odd and seems amazingly unlikely. Thanks again Testy ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/38 "2006-03-16T16:27:09Z")
> [@toadspittle](#): > > What about algae, scooped up from a body of water (just like frogs/fish get scooped up and dropped)? That idea has been looked into. However there isn’t any DNA in the celllike structures, and the rain patterns do not seem to imply that it was caused by an earthbound object being absorbed into the atmosphere then dropped back down. ---
**Author:** ![sunfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@sunfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunfish)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/39 "2006-03-16T18:46:22Z")
Wesley, a word to the wise - I would strongly suggest that if you want to continue to track this story, you should wait to hear conclusions from a biologist. Louis and Kumar’s explanation requiring the rainfall pattern to be related to an incoming meteor strike does not have terribly strong ties to reality. In any case, rainfall patterns here don’t preclude an earthly origin for biological materials. Things like algae can in fact become aerosolized (converted to air-borne particles) along with sea spray, and then transported for some distance. At this time, all that _anyone_ can say is that the material isolated from the red rain samples might have some biological potential which is as yet undetermined. The _Guardian_ article that you linked to, Wesley, carries this correction at the top (bolding mine): > [@](#): > > In the article below, Dr Milton Wainwright was quoted as saying that red rain lacked DNA. **Dr Wainwright has asked us to make clear that currently he has no view on whether red rain contains DNA** and that it is physicist Godfrey Louis who is of that view. If the biologist now working with the samples isn’t comfortable making a statement at this time, then we ought to maintain some skepticism. I also just noticed that the same article mentions Louis “gathering samples left over from the rains.” This brings up yet another issue. The samples were left over, how? In puddles? Cisterns? Barrels? The paper itself is vague on this subject, yet another sign of sloppiness. If the newspaper statement is actually true and not some misconveyance of information by the reporter, then we have the additional problem of potential “contamination” of the red rain samples by earthly life that has not been addressed by Louis and Kumar. Really, this is one situation where Occam’s razor is very appropriate. ---
**Author:** ![Testy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c37758/32.png) [@Testy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Testy)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367/40 "2006-03-16T19:58:41Z")
Follow-up. The frustrating thing about these kinds of reports is that there is never any follow-up. I don’t mean on the science, that sounds like it is getting done although I wish it were faster. The problem is that after the biologists have checked into this stuff and found that it is bat-blood, algae, iron-rust or other perfectly ordinary substance, no one ever hears of it. I’m sure that this is the fault of the media, after all: “Perfectly ordinary rain of rusty water discovered in Kerela!” is not really a great headline. Without feedback, the impression left in everyone’s mind is that the science wasn’t done. I occasionally think this is the cause of all the conspiracy theories about researchers covering-up some incredible discovery. Regards Testy [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-people-ever-figure-out-what-the-red-rain-in-kerala-was/348367.md?page=3)