Journal Retracts Controversial Study After 15 Years

Fifteen years after the journal Science published a bombshell study with the potential to rewrite the rules of how life can form, the journal is retracting the paper, reports Nature. The authors of the paper adamantly disagree with the decision.

• In what came to be known as the "arsenic life" paper, researchers say they found a microbe in California's Mono Lake with unusual properties. As the New York Times explains: "In the lab, they found it could replace phosphorus, a key chemical for all known biological beings, with arsenic, an element that is typically toxic. If the discovery were confirmed, it would change scientists' fundamental conceptions about life on Earth, and in the cosmos."

• The problem is that the research, funded in part by NASA, could not be replicated. Critics say it shouldn't be possible for an organism "so toxic to make DNA and proteins," per the AP, and they suspected that contaminants fouled the initial research. The finding, if true, would expand where life is possible in the universe.
• "If the editors determine that a paper's reported experiments do not support its key conclusions, even if no fraud or manipulation occurred, a retraction is considered appropriate," the journal's editor-in-chief Holden Thorp wrote in a statement announcing the retraction.
• Despite the move, lead author Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her team stand by their data and object to the journal's decision, calling it unprecedented. "One doesn't retract a paper because the interpretation is controversial, or even because most disagree with the interpretation," wrote study co-author Ariel Anbar of Arizona State University in an email to the AP. "At least, that hasn't been the case until now."