The takeaway is not that the amounts available are nontrivial; rather, it's that we are trivial.

This is reductive, but think of a telescope like a zooming lens on a typical camera. When you zoom in on an object to get a clear shot, you need to set your focus to do so. Objects that are closer or farther than where you've set your focus will be progressively more blurry and harder to make out.

What's happened here is that JWST was interested in something at a completely different distance, but caught a blurry image of something much closer.

Sure, but basing your approach to news as "what would the stupidest person draw from this" would make news far worse than clickbait.

Do you genuinely think that most people reading this go "ah, there must have been life on Mars that I've just never heard about"?

I guess if you're bringing the preexisting knowledge of an illiterate child to the equation, which seems likely, that'd be true. Since anyone with even a smattering of knowledge about space knows that we haven't explicitly proved that life exists, the meaning here is clear.

If you feel that the title is confidently stating that the microbes existed, the problem is yours and not the article's title.

>Science is already fascinating and worthy of clicks without lying and baiting

Sure! But, in a vicious media economy where very few people will actually pay you money directly for your product, sites will be heavily incentivized to seek clicks (i.e. ad revenue) at the expense of all else. Until that incentive is removed, expect this to keep happening.

Because the truth is: Everyone here complains about these sorts of posts ad nauseum, but they're still posted, still upvoted, and still generate a ton of discussion and eyeballs. We've voted with our clicks, and clickbait won.