>>16715883 (OP)Time for a history lesson Anon,
NASA had a specific experiment on Viking which was meant to DIRECTLY search for life in the Martian soil.
This experiment tested positive for life - *multiple times*.
.
In any other scientific context, this would be met jubilation and triumph, or at least with fervent scramble to conduct follow up experiments.
In the event, their actual response was to discredit the experiment (which they themselves designed) and to abandon all similar experiments in the future, and instead focus on beating around the bush looking for things like water or methane.
This is absurd, and has no precedent in any other scientific field, the equivalent of achieving sustained fusion or detecting the neutrino and then immediately destroying the reactor/detector.
NASA is well aware that there is no life anywhere in our solar system.
It is a marketing tool, meant to manipulate and bleed tax dollars out of the public to fund their pet projects in geology.
If the public realized this, they would never subsidize a relatively niche field of zero practical or economic importance (exogeology on uninhabitable worlds which are economically inferior to asteroids in every way imaginable).