The journal that a paper is published in should absolutely affect our assessment of the facts in it - if the journal tends to publish only bullshit, we should mark any article that appears in that journal with a pretty high bullshit factor. That's not to say that it can't be overcome, but it's still a mark against.
I'd personally argue that the a priori likelihood of us finding a rock that fell to earth from outer space that happens to contain bacteria inside it (given that we know life is relatively rare) is so low that, coupled with the shady journal it's published in, the claim is so extraordinary that it would be very difficult to provide certain enough evidence to make me think it's true. As in, I'd probably put the probability that this is a straight up fraudulent hoax higher than the probability that this is actually true evidence of alien life.
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Tossing on my Bayesian hat for a moment...
The journal that a paper is published in should absolutely affect our assessment of the facts in it - if the journal tends to publish only bullshit, we should mark any article that appears in that journal with a pretty high bullshit factor. That's not to say that it can't be overcome, but it's still a mark against.
I'd personally argue that the a priori likelihood of us finding a rock that fell to earth from outer space that happens to contain bacteria inside it (given that we know life is relatively rare) is so low that, coupled with the shady journal it's published in, the claim is so extraordinary that it would be very difficult to provide certain enough evidence to make me think it's true. As in, I'd probably put the probability that this is a straight up fraudulent hoax higher than the probability that this is actually true evidence of alien life.