Kenneth Chang

The headline is “Life on Mars? Rover’s Latest Discovery Puts It ‘On the Table’”. That’s not false.

The headline in the tweet says that curiosity discovered molecules produced by living organisms.

Organic molecules are produced by living organisms. Curiosity discovered organic molecules. I agree that if all you read are tweets, you’ll have a misleading, incomplete picture of the news. That’s why I write 1,100-word articles.

Some organic molecules are produced by living organisms. Not all. I appreciate your work on the article but whoever wrote the tweet did you and the discovery a disservice by writing something that wasn’t true.

Indeed, if you look at the other comments on the tweet you’ll see peoples’ reactions are either “oh they found life” or “oh this is false”

The tweet should have had a “possibly” after molecules (or another analogous formulation)

Simple, effective, elegant solution :)

1/I wrote the article, not the tweet. (A variation on reporters disclaiming, “I don’t write the headlines.”) That’s an odd defense since the tweet is, verbatim, the first sentence of the article.