“Can you imagine eating toxic waste for breakfast?” Science magazine asked in a 2010 press release touting a newly discovered microbe controversially claimed to “live and grow entirely off arsenic.”

The claim was controversial because it flew in the face of well-established biochemistry. Of the many elements thought crucial for life, one of the most important is phosphorus, which serves as a building block for DNA and other biomolecules. But in samples from California’s Mono Lake, a research team had found evidence of a bacterium swapping out phosphorus for arsenic. If true, the result would’ve rewritten textbooks and led to radical revisions in our understanding of where and how life might crop up elsewhere in the cosmos. The trouble was: many experts weren’t convinced.

Now, some 15 years later, the venerable scientific journal has retracted this “arsenic life” study, once the star of a NASA news conference because of its epochal astrobiological implications. First elevating an early-career U.S. Geological Survey researcher, Felisa Wolfe-Simon, to acclaim, then to controversy, the study convulsed the scientific community for two years, raising questions over how science is both conducted and publicized.

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“Science has decided that this Research Article meets the criteria for retraction by today’s standards,” said the journal’s editor-in-chief Holden Thorp in the July 24 retraction notice. While Science’s earlier standards only allowed for the retraction of a study because of fraud or misconduct, he explained, the journal now allows for removal if a paper’s experiments don’t support its key conclusions. He pointed to two 2012 studies, also published by Science, that suggested the Mono Lake microbe, dubbed GFAJ-1, merely sequestered arsenic extraordinarily well internally and didn’t rely on it for its metabolism or reproduction. “Given the evidence that the results were based on contamination, Science believes that the key conclusion of the paper is based on flawed data,” states a follow-up blog post co-authored by Thorp and Valda Vinson, executive editor for the Science journals. Ten Science studies have been retracted for unintended error since 2019, according to a spokesperson for the journal.

The study’s authors, including Wolfe-Simon, protested the retraction in a letter to Science. “Claims should be made, tested, challenged, and ultimately judged on the scientific merits by the scientific community itself,” they wrote.

One of the study’s authors, geochemist Ariel Anbar of Arizona State University, calls the retraction explanation “unbelievably misleading,” saying the evidence for contamination in the original study was weak and should be adjudicated by scientists, not the journal. “You would think that if Science wanted to retract this paper after nearly 15 years, they would be able to come up with a clear, convincing argument for the published record—developed transparently and presented coherently. You would be wrong.”

A NASA official has also asked Science to reconsider the retraction, saying the journal has “singled out” the study and that the decision upends scientific standards.

In some respects, the arsenic life saga is less about the disputed result itself and more about the zeitgeist in which it emerged. The study debuted at a seminal moment when the stately and slow tradition of scientific peer review was speeding up and moving online, opening up to the wider scientific community and closely coupling with the 24/7 churn of social media and digital news. With the benefit of hindsight, the ensuing furor was if nothing else a warning about “big, if true” research results rapidly rolled out to breathless fanfare—in this case the now notorious NASA news conference. Wolfe-Simon, then a 33-year-old NASA astrobiology fellow, became a scientific celebrity practically overnight—and also a lightning rod for controversy.

The research team’s decision to engage minimally with online criticism while handling disagreements in the more formal, slow-moving world of scientific journals played badly in the burgeoning blogosphere era, with effects that linger clearly today. “Over the years, Science has continued to receive media inquiries about the Wolfe-Simon Research Article, highlighting the extent to which the paper is still part of scientific discussions,” Thorp noted in the retraction statement.

In February questions of retracting the study were apparently revived by a New York Times profile of Wolfe-Simon that portrayed her and the search for arsenic life in sympathetic terms. Amid the profile’s publication, Anbar says, he and other study authors received queries about a retraction from the journal, followed by a notification of its decision to proceed with a plan to retract (against the authors’ stated disagreement). The authors eventually okayed a draft of the retraction that made it clear that there was no misconduct, but the stated basis for retraction was still vague, Anbar says.

“My conclusion is that, yes, the paper should be retracted so that a statement of caution appears whenever it is accessed,” says Patricia Foster, an emerita professor of biology and research ethicist at Indiana University, noting that it was still generating fresh citations in peer-reviewed science papers. But, she adds, it’s important that the retraction notice makes clear that no research misconduct is suspected about the work.

Leonid Kruglyak of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, a co-author of one of the 2012 papers that found that GFAJ-1 merely sequestered arsenic, also agrees with Science’s retraction. It is now appropriate based on the new standards for retracting papers with seriously flawed conclusions such as the GFAJ-1 study, he says. “I don’t think this is really a dispute, except on the part of the authors themselves.”

One critic of the retraction, however, is chemist Steven Benner of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, who sat on the 2010 NASA news conference as a skeptical voice. Science, he says, shouldn’t act as a “gatekeeper” by retracting a study that might be wrong but wasn’t fraudulent; doing so carries its own threat to open scientific research, in his view. “The paper should stay, and it has simply met the fate of many papers that were wrong,” he says. “It’s an object lesson on how wonky results get fixed.”

GFAJ-1 grown on arsenic. — NASA

Update: see below. Science Magazine is trying to bully me. Keith’s note: Science magazine is retracting a NASA paper they published 15 years ago – “A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus“ – but they are not saying exactly why they are doing so – other than a new standard they just invented. And it took them 15 years to figure this out. Statement from NASA associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate Nicola Fox: (more below)

“At NASA, the Gold Standard of Science is at the heart of our scientific discoveries that help us to better understand our solar system, and our place in it, for the benefit of all humanity. We have, and will continue to be, open and transparent in our communications on results that we have funded, even if results are found to be incorrect. The change in policy at the journal, Science, to retract research publications due to a disconnection between the data and the published conclusions is unprecedented and upends the current standards in the research and scientific fields.

Since Science has not applied this new standard across the board and has singled out this particular paper alone that was published 15 years ago, NASA does not condone or support the retraction decision made by Science. The agency encourages Science to reconsider its retraction to protect the integrity of the scientific process in action, the value of pre-publication peer review, and reinforce those who publish intellectually risky results for the benefit of the world.”

“NASA-Funded Astrobiology Research Discovers Earth Life Built With Arsenic” 2 Dec 2010

UDPATE: Oh well @ScienceMagazine is trying to bully me. Here is the email exchange:

“Dear Keith, I am writing you from the press office at AAAS-Science regarding the NASA Watch story https://nasawatch.com/astrobiology/science-magazine-retracts-nasa-astrobiology-paper-but-only-after-15-years/ and X post here: https://x.com/NASAWatch/status/1948429566453973238 The story relates to the Science Retraction and author eLetter which will be published by the journal Science today at 2pm US ET, and are embargoed until that time. We have been working with many journalists to respond to questions related to this embargoed content. They are each waiting to post their stories until the embargo-lift time. We request that the NASA Watch story (and related social post) be taken down immediately. They could be reposted at 2pm US ET. We do not see you among our registrants. May we ask how you came upon the embargoed Science retraction and embargoed author eLetter response? Stories related to research published in the journal Science are embargoed until 2:00 p.m. US ET on Thursday unless otherwise noted and are not to be placed in the public domain, via subscriber distribution, newsstand sales, online postings or other methods, prior to the exact embargo-release time. The embargo protects the credibility of the research entrusted to us for publication and ensures a level playing field for journalists in developed and developing nations. Thank you for your urgent attention to this embargo matter. My colleagues and I at SciPak and EurekAlert! look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible. Regards, Meagan Phelan”

My response

“Excuse me but I have not posted your story. I posted a statement from NASA – that NASA sent to me – unsolicited – minus any “embargo” stated or implied. I am not in receipt of any embargoed news items from AAAS, Eurekalert or Science Magazine – nor have I ever been. I am not on your embargoed media release list or any other list. Check your mailing list. You cannot threaten me for breaking an embargo on materials I simply have no access to. And you want me to reveal my sources? Fat chance. Have a nice day. Keith“

Update: It is a little strange for SCIENCE to take 15 years to do an about face on the 2010 NASA Arsensic article given the pre-release hype that they put in their ‘SciencePak’ emailer that went out in advance. They even wrote a “kids version’ of this article! (screen grab below)