Reply #4: "Only Dan Brown’s next novel can tell us."

[Silent3]

I don't think the author of the story is considering the conspiracy angle all that likely. Is even entertaining the conspiracy idea out loud giving it too much credence? I suppose you could make that case, but given the flippant last line of the article, I'd say this isn't much more that idle cocktail conversation published as a minor article.

At any rate, I doubt anyone would consider detecting organic compounds, even using better-designed experiments, as utterly conclusive of life on Mars. A positive result there would at best boost the probability. Until we can do at least as well as seeing Martian microbes through a microscope, being 99.9% certain we aren't viewing recent (recent meaning from anytime during human space travel) contamination carried to Mars from Earth, I don't think any good scientist would feel comfortable making a strong positive assertion of life on Mars.

So even if this crazy conspiracy did exist, at most it would mess with marginal degrees of suspicion of Martian life. We simply haven't attempted anything that could have been close to conclusive yet anyway.