‘Arsenic life’ paper retracted after 15 years — against its authors’ will

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The Thirty Meter Telescope, a major international project long slated for construction in Hawaii, might be getting a new home. The Spanish government has pitched to bring the giant facility to La Palma, in Spain’s Canary Islands — and backed up the effort with a pledge to contribute €400 million. The move comes after US president Donald Trump’s administration announced plans to abandon further support for the telescope, which had been expecting funding from the US National Science Foundation.

Nature | 4 min read

Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) are masters of energy efficiency: instead of taking a straight-line route to their destination, they’ll ride curved currents that are headed roughly in that direction when possible. The currents can make their trips slightly longer, but that has an upside — it allows them more time to hunt for food. Researchers found that by using currents, the penguins consistently returned to within 300 metres of their homes. The findings suggest that the birds keep track of the changing tidal cycle and use it to their advantage.

Earth.com | 4 min read

Reference: PLOS Biology paper

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Nature | 5 min read

The end of an arsenic-life era

In 2010, researchers reported that they’d identified a microorganism at Mono Lake, California that could use the toxic element arsenic in place of phosphorus in its biological molecules. (Getty)

A controversial paper claiming that a microorganism can thrive on arsenic has been retracted by the journal Science, nearly 15 years after its original publication. The decision has been praised by some scientists, who say it’s been a long time coming. The paper’s authors disagree — they stand by their data and argue that the retraction isn’t merited.

When the paper was published, Science mostly reserved retractions for cases of misconduct, says the journal’s editor-in-chief Holden Thorp in the paper’s retraction statement. Since then, the publication has expanded its criteria for what warrants a retraction. “If the editors determine that a paper’s reported experiments do not support its key conclusions”, as is the case for this paper, a retraction is now appropriate, Thorp writes.

In an open letter, all but one of the authors of the paper have suggested that Science has gone beyond the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics, an advisory group that recommends best practices in academic publishing. Representatives of NASA, the agency that funded the original work, have also expressed disappointment in the retraction.

Nature | 7 min read & Science | 7 min read

Reference: Science paper (retracted) & retraction statement

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Nature | 6 min read

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