From the article:

"The quick backtrack illustrates the danger of bypassing peer review when announcing new results, Peter Doran, an Arctic and Antarctic researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told OurAmazingPlanet.

. . . .

"'You can say anything you want in a press release,' Doran said. 'The peer review literature (by contrast) is very controlled. It needs to be substantiated, and written in clear language.'"

Yep. That's the problem. There is a well known science news cycle

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

in which a researcher announces a preliminary result, but as a press release is compiled, the result is hyped up. Then credulous journalists who don't know much about science hype it some more.

My all-time favorite link to share in any Hacker News discussion of a speculative research finding like those posted here in the last few days is the article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" by Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, on how to interpret scientific research.

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

Check each submission to Hacker News you read for how many of the important issues in interpreting research are NOT discussed in the submission.

What does this mean for any future findings from this effort? For the purpose of examining ancient lifeforms in this lake; is the lake now considered contaminated by surface organisms?

Kind of bummed out over this news to be honest. Well, we still have deep sea exploration - I'm sure there's something down there that we haven't found yet.

And "previously unknown" contamination at that. That team has just lost a lot of credibility.

Lesson learned: before buying any "AIDS cured" or "New DNA found on earth" we need to chill and wait for the hype to settle.

Science -- The greatest religion of them all.