A remarkable discovery appeared in the journal Science in 2010.  Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues reported finding, in California’s salty Mono Lake, a bacterium that could substitute arsenic for phosphorus in its metabolism.  This was stunning, as phosphorus was thought to be an essential constituent of many biological macromolecules, including proteins and DNA—the latter using phosphorus as part of its backbone.  (The bacterium was, by the way, named GFAJ-1, standing for “Give Felisa a job,” as she was apparently looking for a permanent academic position.)

At any rate, this was huge news, and implied, to many, including hype-promoting journalists, that if life could thrive on arsenic, perhaps the chances of life on other planets was higher than we thought. Wolfe-Simon herself implied that perhaps there was a “shadow biosphere,” on Earth, including organisms that we didn’t know of because their biochemistry was so different from that of life we knew.

The publicity attending this discovery was huge: NASA held a press conference in which Simon was the only one of the dozen authors to appear. Simon also gave a TED talk on this subject, and in 2011 Time Magazine named her one of “Time’s 100 people,” supposedly the most influential group in the world.

The problem, which emerged pretty rapidly, is that this discovery was wrong. The research was sloppy, the reviewers apparently didn’t have the proper expertise to review the paper, and researchers who did have the expertise began pointing out the discovery’s flaws, first online and then in a series of eight critiques published in Science. As Wikipedia notes,

 If correct, this would be the only known organism to be capable of replacing phosphorus in its DNA and other vital biochemical functions.^[14][15][16] The Science publication and an hour-long December 2, 2010 NASA news conference were publicized and led to “wild speculations on the Web about extraterrestrial life”.^[17] Wolfe-Simon was the only one of the paper’s authors at that news conference.^[18] The news conference was promptly met with criticism by scientists and journalists.^[19] In the following month, Wolfe-Simon (and her co-authors and NASA) responded to criticisms through an online FAQ and an exclusive interview with a Science reporter, but also announced they would not respond further outside scientific peer-review.^[20][21] In April 2011 Time magazine named Wolfe-Simon one of that year’s Time 100 people.^[22][23]

The Science article “A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus” appeared in the June 3, 2011 print version of Science;^[1] it had remained on the “Publication ahead of print” ScienceXpress page for six months after acceptance for publication. However, Rosemary Redfield and other researchers from the University of British Columbia and Princeton University performed studies in which they used a variety of different techniques to investigate the presence of arsenic in the DNA of GFAJ-1 and published their results in early 2012. The group found no detectable arsenic in the DNA of the bacterium. In addition, they found that arsenate did not help the strain grow when phosphate was limited, further suggesting that arsenate does not replace the role of phosphate.^[24][25]

Following the publication of the articles challenging the conclusions of the original Science article first describing GFAJ-1, the website Retraction Watch argued that the original article should be retracted because of misrepresentation of critical data.^[26][27] In October 2024, Science editor Holden Thorp notified the article’s authors of its intention to retract, arguing that, whereas formerly only misconduct justified retraction, current practice allows it for unreliablity.^[22]

I wrote about the controversy at the time; see my several posts here.  Simon et al. apparently were dead wrong.  This was first revealed byblog posts by Rosie Redfield (who later published a critique in the literature) and followed by eight critiques in Science about the Wolfe-Simon et al, paper, and two failed attempts to replicate their results, both of which failed. Wolfe-Simon did not get her coveted job and, as the new NYT article below reports, she now spends her time making music on the oboe, and working part-time on bacteria that apparently can use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate.

Now the NYT has revisited the controversy on its 15th anniversary, and has published a long and remarkable article that does its best to exculpate Wolfe-Simon and demonize her critic. As the headline below implies, she further “changed science forever.”  That’s wrong. Why do they do this? Greg Mayer has two theories, which are his, and I’ll mention them below.

Click below to read the NYT article by Sarah Scoles, which is also archived here.

The article is remarkably soft on Wolfe-Simon, downplaying the scientific sloppiness of her theme and making her into kind of heroine who was unfairly attacked by a social-media mob They don’t mention microbiologist Rosie Redfield, a prime critic responsible for pointing out the errors of Wolfe-Simon et al., though one link goes to her.  The article implies, as I said, that “her discovery” (it was a group of people!) nevertheless changed science forever, for it was critiqued on social media (something that the NYT implies is bad), and from then on science has been vetted, even before papers are formally published, by non-scientists or scientists who publish their criticisms on social media, including blogs. This, claims author Scoles, has affected science so it’s never been the same.

Scoles is wrong and grossly exaggerates the situation.  Papers were criticized on social media long before Wolfe-Simon’s, but hers received special attention solely because not only was it a remarkable phenomenon, one hard to believe, but also because the authors gave it huge hype, helped along by the press. Remarkable results deserve remarkable attention. And, in the end, the problems with the Wolfe-Simon paper and the failure to replicate it found their way into the scientific literature, so that nobody now believes that there was an arsenic-using bacterium.  This is the way science is supposed to work, and in this case it did work. A sloppy and incorrect report was corrected.

Now others, including Science‘s editor Holden Thorp, as well as David Sanders in the Retraction Watch article below from 2020, feel that Wolfe-Simon et al. paper should be retracted.  I disagree. Retraction, if it’s used for anything, should be reserved for papers that were duplicitous, containing fake data or false assertions.  Wolfe-Simon et al. simply produced an incorrect and poorly reviewed paper, but there was no cheating. The paper should stay, and its simply met the fate of many papers that were wrong (remember, at least two Nobel Prizes have been given for sloppy and incorrect science). It is an object lesson on how wonky results get fixed.

Click below to read this Retraction Watch article from 2021, or see the more recent article here.

The question remains: why did the NYT paint a misleading picture of Felisa Wolfe-Simon, of her detractors, and of the scientific process? Why did they go so easy on her, making her into a heroine who was unfairly mobbed—to the point where she could not find an academic job.  Greg Mayer suggested two theories:

1.) Greg notes that because the article “makes her out as a victim”, it plays into the “victim narrative” of scientists who were treated unfairly (she was a woman, too, which feeds into that narrative).  And newspapers love victim narratives.

2.) Greg also wrote,  “The article seems in line with the Times’s embrace of woo: another example of credulous reporting of outlandish claims, a la their recent UFO coverage.”

I’m going to let Greg dilate on these theories, which are his, below, so come back to this post later on today to see what he says. I agree with him in the main, and we both agree that Wolfe-Simon’s paper should NOT be retracted.

Addendum by Greg Mayer.

My first suggestion is actually the “scientist as hero” narrative, which portrays the lone scientist as struggling against an entrenched orthodoxy that tries to suppress their discoveries. For some discussion of the narrative, its faults, but also its upside, see this post by Andrew Gelman and the links within it. The media love this narrative– sometimes it’s even true! That the “hero scientist” becomes a “victim” is even better– now you’re Galileo! It doesn’t hurt if the victim seems to be opposed by heartless male editors like Holden Thorpe; it helps if you neglect to mention that some of the most incisive criticisms were by another female scientist. But as someone once said, you can’t wrap yourself in the cloak of Galileo merely because orthodoxy opposes you: you must also be right. Getting a sympathetic reassessment in the Times also fits well with the initial strategy of maximum media attention (NASA press conference, TED talk, Glamour, Time, Wall Street Journal, etc.) as a way to advance one’s career, and with the general approach to science of the media, including the Times.

The second suggestion, which is not mutually exclusive, is that the article follows the Times recent attraction to woo, like astrology and UFOs. A lot of elite media have gotten in on the latter– see Andrew Gelman again, especially here. He points out that the media seem to think they are being skeptical of elites and authority when purveying this stuff, but while doubting authority, they gullibly accept anything else they’re told. (There’s a very similar strain in RFK Jr.’s approach to science.) But, as Gelman notes, extreme skepticism bleeds into credulity.