Mono Lake bacteria may be nothing special

Did this month's revelations of an arsenic-eating microbe in the mud at Mono Lake really upend our basic understanding of how life works? Not so much, a growing chorus of scientists is saying. Karen Kaplan and Eryn Brown in the LAT:

News reports were dewy-eyed with wonderment over the study, which challenged conventional notions of what life on Earth — or elsewhere — could look like. Then, in short measure, came the scientific trash talk.

"Flim-flam." "Naive." "Fraudulent."

An embarrassing PR gaffe? Mediocre science that got undue attention because the buildup was too sexy to resist? A case of the peer-review process gone horribly wrong?

All played a role. But mostly, the wrangling is just a turbo-charged version of the kind of debate researchers have engaged in for centuries.