Last year, a press release announced that the "strongest signs" of extraterrestrial life had been found on the exoplanet K2-18b. Also, NASA's director said about a sample collected from a rock called "Chiawa Falls" on Mars that it was "the closest thing we've come to discovering life on the Red Planet."
However, according to EITNA and citing SciTechDaily, a research team led by Durham University recently surveyed hundreds of astrobiologists around the world to find out what most scientists think about these claims. The results showed a cautious picture.
For K2-18b, only 6.6 percent of astrobiologists agreed that scientists had likely found extraterrestrial life, while nearly two-thirds disagreed. For Mars, confidence was higher but still cautious: 15.1 percent agreed, 44.6 percent disagreed, and 40.3 percent were neutral.
According to the researchers, the proportion of astrobiologists who were strongly disagreeing dropped markedly, indicating a shift from outright rejection toward more cautious positions.
One possible reason is that the two cases involved different kinds of evidence. The K2-18b claim was based on potential atmospheric signals identified from interstellar distance, whereas the Mars case involved a rock that could be studied directly and in much greater detail.
The C-Scope research group at Durham University believes the broader lesson of this survey goes beyond extraterrestrial life. In fields such as climate science, pandemics, artificial intelligence, or medical research, public discussions often appeal to the scientific consensus.
Sometimes a strong consensus truly exists and sometimes it does not; but we often lack systematic methods to measure what scientists actually think.