An arsenic-loving bacterium sent the blogosphere into overdrive.

It started quietly enough. NASA announced a press conference “to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life” to be published in Science. Some people put two and two together but didn't get four: Jason Kottke, for example, suggested that NASA had “discovered arsenic on Titan and maybe even detected chemical evidence of bacteria utilizing it for photosynthesis” (http://go.nature.com/7gdq6m). When the paper came out you could almost feel the hype deflating, but plenty of people still found the 'Bacterium that can grow by using arsenic instead of phosphorus' interesting (http://go.nature.com/fjHeOg).

The press coverage was intense, but people were reading the paper carefully and critically. To take just one prominent example, blogging (micro)biologist Rosie Redfield concluded on RRResearch “Lots of flim-flam, but very little reliable information” (http://go.nature.com/DDeSJW). As the blogosphere's reaction continued, science writer Carl Zimmer contacted 13 experts, all of whom gave the paper a thumbs-down in an article for Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2276919/).

Responding to the comments, the paper's first author, Felisa Wolfe-Simon, issued a statement that the authors “welcome lively debate” but that they “invite others to read the paper and submit any responses to Science for review so that we can officially respond” (http://www.ironlisa.com/gfaj/). Indeed, the backlash against the backlash was supported by Dr Isis, who forthrightly told those critical of the work to “Put your experiment where your mouth is! [...] The language of those discussions needs to be data” (http://go.nature.com/r6TDCn). The episode caused many blogs to question the roles of peer-review, press conferences and blogging — too many to list.

And finally...if you're worried about the future of peer-review after this, why not read some of Environmental Biology's funniest reviewers' quotes (http://go.nature.com/mvwwCY).