Ammonia on Mars: Hoax?

Conditional signs of life on a distant planet

"Mr. De Marchi also went on to castigate the article's use of an unnamed NASA scientist. 'This makes it of course impossible to trace how the information did surface,' adding slyly that the wrongness of the report means 'it must be very hot in England this week.'"

I expected the (presumed) tentative discovery of ammonia on Mars to be controversial; I wasn't prepared for allegations of "hoax." Committed conspiracy theorists will, of course, interpret this change of events as an effort to "kill" the ammonia story and its biological implications.

Sorry for the sparse "analysis"; I'm waiting to hear more on this . . .