Dr. Milton Wainwright from The Cardiff Center for Astrobiology at Sheffield University is having a busy week. Dr. Wainwright is claiming to have isolated a bacterium that causes cancer. He and his collegues are also claiming success in their quest to find microorganisms of extraterrestrial origin. This week’s double header is only the latest in a number of controversial efforts for Dr. Wainwright. Just a few weeks ago he published a paper on penecillin he thinks Fleming should have written back in 1928, another discovery that depended on something being where it shouldn’t have been. This follows his historical research to bring appropriate fame to Albert Schatz’s largely unknown work in the 1940s that led to streptomycin and a cure for TB. He’s also a champion of the out-of-vogue theory of extreme pleomorphism among bacteria. This theory holds that common bacteria have more than one physical form and can change to radical new shapes to meet environmental conditions, which most scientists dismiss as an artifact of poor culturing techniques among early microbiologists. Say what you will about Dr. Wainwright, he has a point about the need for rebels in science.