Current Affairs: Passage of the Week - 28 July 2025 | Current Affairs & General Knowledge - CLAT PDF Download

Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.
Fifteen years ago, a group of scientists made the bold claim of having discovered a microorganism that could survive using chemistry different from any known life-form. On Thursday, the journal Science, where these findings were reported, formally retracted the 2010 paper, saying it was fundamentally flawed.
While there is broad scientific consensus against the study’s findings, the retraction nonetheless is contentious, and potentially opens a pandora’s box for academic publishing.
Why study went viral
Living beings typically rely on a number of common elements, including carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur, to build biomolecules such as DNA, proteins and lipids.
In 2009, researchers collected a microbe from Mono Lake, a salty and alkaline body of water in California. In the lab, they claimed to have found that this microbe could replace phosphorus with arsenic, an element that is typically toxic. Phosphorus is essential to the structure of DNA and RNA and to the function of the energy-transporter molecule ATP.
If confirmed, the discovery would change scientists’ fundamental conceptions about life on Earth, and possibly beyond. Naturally, the study received a lot of attention, and travelled well beyond the typical terrain of academic conferences and scientific journals.
Many scientists around the world expressed serious concerns with the study’s methodology and conclusions. Most notably, the discovery was picked up by the Internet. On the then nascent Twitter, it trended with the hashtag #arseniclife. The study’s authors also faced extreme scrutiny into their personal lives.
Why retraction is contentious
Science has not accused the paper’s authors of misconduct or fraud, and instead cited its latest standards for retractions, which allow it to take down a study based on “errors” by the researchers. The decision was made after The New York Times last year reached out to Science for a comment on about the legacy of the #arseniclife affair.
That inquiry “convinced us that this saga wasn’t over, that unless we wanted to keep talking about it forever, we probably ought to do some things to try to wind it down,” Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of Science since 2019, told The NYT. “And so that’s when I started talking to the authors about retracting.”
But the paper’s authors disagree with the decision. Their defenders, including officials at NASA, which helped fund the original research, say the move is outside the norms of what usually leads to the striking down of a published paper.
Ariel Anbar, a geochemist at Arizona State University and one of the paper’s authors, has said that the data itself is not flawed, and if disputes about “data interpretation” were acceptable standards for retraction, “you’d have to retract half the literature”.
As justification for the retraction, the Science statement cites the technical objections published alongside the paper, and failed replications of the findings in 2012. But the original paper’s authors have responded to the objections and criticised replication experiments. Anbar has accused Science of not providing any “reasonable explanation” for the retraction.
Ivan Oransky, a specialist in academic publishing, told Nature that this retraction raises an interesting question. There are plenty of debunked papers in the literature that could be retracted, he says. Will other publishers get on board with trying to clean up the scientific record? And if so, “where do you start?”
[Excerpt from Indian Express "NASA’s Arsenic Life Claim Retracted After Fifteen Years" Dated 28/07/25]

Q1: What was the main claim of the 2010 NASA-funded study about the microbe GFAJ-1?
(a) It could survive without water
(b) It used arsenic instead of phosphorus in its DNA
(c) It was the first life form found on Mars
(d) It could produce its own oxygen

View Answer  

Ans: (b)
Sol: The study claimed that the microbe GFAJ-1 could substitute arsenic, a toxic element, for phosphorus in its DNA.

Q2: Why did the scientific community eventually reject the GFAJ-1 study's claims?
(a) The bacteria were found to be artificial
(b) The original researchers admitted fraud
(c) Replication attempts failed and evidence contradicted the claim
(d) Arsenic was later classified as safe

View Answer  

Ans: (c)
Sol: Multiple independent labs failed to replicate the findings, and evidence showed that the microbe still required phosphorus.

Q3: What role did blogs and social media play in the GFAJ-1 controversy?
(a) They helped promote the study’s findings
(b) They discouraged further investigation
(c) They aided in post-publication peer review and criticism
(d) They ignored the scientific evidence

View Answer  

Ans: (c)
Sol: Public platforms like blogs and social media were key in informal peer review and challenging the study’s claims.

Q4: What was one of the editorial criticisms related to the GFAJ-1 paper?
(a) The retraction was too quick
(b) NASA refused to share data
(c) The journal Science delayed retraction despite contradictory evidence
(d) The lead author plagiarized content

View Answer  

Ans: (c)
Sol: The journal Science was criticized for delaying the retraction, waiting for further research rather than acting on existing contradictory evidence.

Q5: What broader lesson does the GFAJ-1 case highlight about scientific research?
(a) All new discoveries should be published immediately
(b) Retractions damage science permanently
(c) Science advances through careful review, error, and correction
(d) Interdisciplinary research should be avoided

View Answer  

Ans: (c)
Sol: The case illustrates that science is a self-correcting process involving scrutiny, debate, and transparent correction when needed.