The controversial article "the life of arsenic" was withdrawn after 15 years, but the authors resist

Science magazine withdraws the study, capturing the headlines, but the authors vigorously defend their data and say that the review is unfounded.

A controversial article claiming that an unusual microorganism can thrive on a toxic arsenic element was withdrawn by Science magazine almost 15 years after its initial publication. Some scientists celebrate this step, but the authors of the article disagree with it, saying that they stick to their data and that the review does not deserve it.

In Science's recall statement, editor-in-chief Holden Thorpe says that the magazine did not withdraw the article when critics published the filmed works, because at that time it mainly reserved reviews for cases of misconduct, and "there was no intentional fraud or misconduct on the part of the authors" of the article about arsenic. But since then, Science's criteria for recalling articles have expanded, he writes, and "if the editors determine that the reporting experiments of the article do not confirm its key conclusions", as in the case of this article, the review is now appropriate.

It's good that it's done," says microbiologist Rosie Redfield, who was a prominent critic of the study after its publication in 2010 and who has now retired from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. "Almost everyone knows that the work was a mistake, but it is still important not to confuse newcomers in literature."

On the contrary, one of the authors of the article, Ariel Anbar, a geochemist at Arizona State University in Tempe, says that there are no errors in this article. He says that the data can be interpreted in several ways, but "you do not withdraw because of a dispute about the interpretation of data". If this is the standard you had to apply, it says: "You will have to withdraw half of the literature."

Arsenic and old lakes

The original study of "arsenic life" was published by Science on December 2, 2010 and quickly raised eyebrows.

Living beings rely on many common elements, including carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur, to create biomolecules such as DNA, proteins and lipids. For example, phosphorus, mainly in the form of a phosphate ion, PO43−, is important for the structure of DNA and RNA and the function of the ATP energy transporter molecule.

The authors of the scientific article postulated that there may be organisms on Earth that do not need all these elements. They broke through the arsenic-rich sediments of California's Lake Mono and found a member of the Halomonadaceae family of bacteria, which, as they concluded after several types of analysis, could use this usually toxic element instead of phosphorus.

After the article was published, chemists and biologists targeted it in magazines and social networks. Chemists said that if arsenic is included in the DNA base, the bonds will be so unstable that they will fall apart in the water in less than a second. Microbiologists, including Redfield, pointed out shortcomings in the work, such as the fact that the bacterial growth medium contained enough phosphate pollution that, despite the team's efforts to prove that the organism could live on arsenic, it was probably still phosphate-dependent.

"There were very, very good reasons to think that the result should be wrong," says Redfield.

In May 2011, Science published eight technical comments, one of them from Redfield, with criticism of articles 3-10, along with the response of the authors denying the comments. The following year, the journal published two studies, including one from Redfield's laboratory, trying - and not enduring - to reproduce the results using bacterial samples from the arsenic team. But science didn't withdraw the article. Until now.

Poisoned bowl?

In February this year, The New York Times published a story about Felice Wolfe-Simon, the lead author of the study, which was published when she was a NASA researcher on astrobiology at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. The story reported that Wolf-Simon, after her career was disrupted due to the negative attention she received because of the article, received short-term funding for new research. This brought the controversy back to light.

But that may not be the last word.

Everyone except one of the living authors of the arsenic newspaper signed an email accompanying today's announcement, which says: "We do not support this review". They suggest that by expanding its feedback standards, Science has gone beyond the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), an advisory group in Eastley, UK, which recommends best practices in academic publications. (The author, who did not sign, but also disagrees with the review - Peter Weber, a full-time researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, - refused to comment on this story.)

Ivan Oransky, a specialist in academic publications and co-founder of the media organization Retraction Watch, notes that the COPE guidelines have long stated that editors may consider withdrawing the publication if there is evidence that the results are "unreliable", either because of a serious error or due to misconduct. These guidelines have not changed, he says, but science has now decided to adopt guidance that allows you to withdraw in case of unreliability, rather than reserve feedback for fraud or misconduct.

Anbar denies that the results are unreliable or wrong. He says that there are many interpretations of the data: the microbe can replace phosphorus with arsenic in its DNA to some extent that the team could not quantify, for example, or it can have a unique ability to collect and live on tiny amounts of phosphorus, living in a huge bullet of arsenic.

And he says that Science violates the COPE guidelines by not including any reasons for taking action against the document in its notice of withdrawal, except that Science's standards for recall have changed. A blog post released today and written by Thorp and Walda Vinson, editor-in-chief of Science, confirms that there was no improper research by the authors, but suggests that another reason for the recall was that the researchers were unable to properly purify nucleic acids from bacteria before analyzing them for arsenic.

Anbar says that he and his colleagues denied this criticism in their peer-reviewed response to technical comments in 2011 and were not notified that it is used in this blog as an excuse for the recall. "If Science editors have reason to conclude that our 2011 response was not adequate, they should explain how to do it," he adds. "Science behaves in a way that completely violates any reasonable behavior."

Thorp refused to answer further.

Oransky says that this retreat raises an interesting question. According to him, there are many debuncated articles in the literature that could be withdrawn. Will other publishers try to clear the scientific record? And if so, "where do you start?"