Science journal pulled a controversial study about a bizarre life form against the authors’ wishes

A microscopic discovery in a California lake sparked buzz and controversy more than a decade ago when it was first revealed.

Scientists said they’d discovered bacteria that used the element arsenic—poisonous to life as we know it—to grow. If true, it expanded the possibilities for where life could exist on Earth—or on other worlds.

Several research groups failed to replicate the results, and argue it’s not possible for a living thing to use something so toxic to make DNA and proteins. Some scientists have suggested the results of the original experiments may have been skewed by undetected contaminants.

On Thursday, the journal Science, which first published the research, retracted it, though not because of misconduct on the researchers’ part.

“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 the statement announcing the retraction.

The researchers disagree with the journal’s decision and stand by their data. It’s reasonable to pull a paper for major errors or suspected misconduct—but debates and disagreements over the findings are part of the scientific process, said study co-author Ariel Anbar of Arizona State University.

“One doesn’t retract a paper because the interpretation is controversial, or even because most disagree with the interpretation,” wrote Anbar in an email. “At least, that hasn’t been the case until now.”

Science has more frequently retracted papers for reasons beside fraud in recent years, wrote Thorp and Vada Vinson, Science’s executive editor, in a blog post.

NASA helped fund the original work. The space agency’s science mission chief Nicky Fox said in a statement that NASA does not support the retraction and encourages Science to reconsider.

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