Jumping the Gun Is Not a Scientific Process
Exaggerated claims
sacrifice scientific modesty
for media clickbait
Wait for the data. Then publish when conclusive.
If scientists and science reporters followed this simple rule, a great deal of media hype would evaporate, and science storytellers would have to get real jobs.
In 2020, there was a media flap about phosphine at Venus. Scientists and their lackey reporters claimed that this was a sure sign of life, because phosphine is only known to be made by living organisms (15 Sept 2020). That bubble burst a few months later when the signal of phosphine by the detectors was cast into doubt, and was probably sulfur dioxide, a common molecule at Venus (22 Jan 2021).
Here is the media cycle for claims like this:
1. Possible life found. Media goes wild!
2. Initial data cast into doubt. Not everyone gets the news.
3. Scientists claim, “This is evidence of the scientific process at work.”
Meanwhile, the damage has been done, and the public has been misled into thinking life is everywhere in outer space. Now it’s happening again. Are some astrobiologists using this news cycle trick to get funding? Some investigative reporter should find out. We have circumstantial evidence here at CEH.
Doubts over signs of alien life on exoplanet K2-18b are rising: ‘This is evidence of the scientific process at work’ (Space.com, 2 May 2025). The press went wild again with claims of biomolecules in the atmosphere of an exoplanet:
Recently, a team of University of Cambridge-led astronomers made global headlines after announcing they’d found the “strongest evidence yet” of life beyond our solar system. Their claims were based on the detection of sulfur-based gases in an alien planet’s atmosphere — gases typically linked to biological processes on Earth. However, a quick independent analysis of the data now casts doubt on the validity of these findings.
The claim was echoed around the world (ex: BBC, Newsmax, BBC Commentary). New Scientist headlined the story on April 17, but encouraged caution. But now, we are now at stage two of the news cycle: the finding is being doubted. Here is how scientists are rescuing their reputations:
“This is evidence of the scientific process at work,” Eddie Schwieterman, an assistant professor of astrobiology at the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved with the new research, told Space.com. “That’s exactly what we want — multiple, independent groups or individuals to analyze and interpret the same data. This is one, and hopefully more will follow.”
Astrobiology, therefore, still has no “bio” in it, reducing it to astrology.
AI generated cartoon of exoplanet with life.
Four days later after the initial claim, New Scientist again suggested caution, saying that the data might be just statistical noise. And by April 18, New Scientist said the claim had been overhyped, but tried to save face by saying it was still a remarkable achievement in measuring.
The caveats came too late for the clickbait-starved science reporters who had already put out the word that scientists had found the “strongest evidence yet” for life on other planets. How many millions of people had read this headline on their smartphones and concluded that life evolves all over the universe? Google News, Apple News, Microsoft News and hundreds of smaller news amalgamators love this stuff. Their artists go to work immediately with imaginative drawings of exoplanets, easy to generate now with AI, and the story hits phones from Hong Kong to Chicago. When stage 2 hits, casting doubt on the initial claim, how many of these people hear about it?
Here’s a simple rule for scientists: shut up until you have conclusive evidence.
Another case of this was the famous “Wow!” signal from SETI, which later was found to be a spectral line of mere hydrogen (26 Aug 2024). I saw this news cycle happening at JPL 20 years ago (6 Aug 2022).
Since we can’t count on astrobiologists and evolutionary biologists to abide by the principle of epistemic modesty, we in the public have to develop our own skill: critical thinking. We’re just following Eddie Schwieterman’s advice: “If the ultimate result of this story is that the public is more circumspect about future claims of life detection, that’s not a terrible thing.”
Always keep your Baloney Detector armed and ready.
Entertainment break: Sing along with “My Impossible Things” on the Funny Pages.
Comments
Oh, yes, there are many examples of this cycle, going way back. Headlines about Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man in textbooks for years, “Nutcracker Man” presented by National Geographic as the missing link — each one later shot down or shoved off to the side, and then the glaring error is pooh-poohed as no big deal, we’re (then) told the experts never did think much of the original claims, there were doubts all along, don’t go by the popular press, so on and so forth. Oh, and let’s not forget Nat Geo’s Archaeoraptor fiasco, the way scientists were so sure the universe was eternal, then billions of years old, and that estimate went up to at least 20 billion for sure, but then it got younger and younger while some astronomers were getting published for their finds of older and older celestial objects until the estimates were starting to overlap — “that’s just the way science works, always improving,” “science is constantly refining its findings” — oh, no, there’s no reason in all of that to doubt what scientists say now, right? Yeah, right. When scientists stick to the proper limits of science, they avoid such problems, and the changes truly are refinements.