Don t know if it is any help to step in here but this is what shows its age When he says any microbes would likely be dormant cryopreserved by the current freezing conditions and so metabolically inactive and unable to repair cellular degradation as it occurs that is what everyone thought at the time the paper was written Now the observation of a drop of salty water on the leg of Phoenix and developments in theoretical understanding and studies of extremophiles able to live in very salty water lead to the idea of habitats where the salt deliquesces and the temperatures are high enough for the salty water to be liquid enough for long enough for life to reproduce if it is there This was not suspected at the time of Dartnell s paper That is why his paper is out of date He says any life but when you look at it he is assuming any life because it is dormant and he makes that clear The science news story took that any life but some of the stories at the time left out the nuance because it must be dormant That s what the difference is Please see the quotes I added below These are notable POVs scientists saying that Mars is habitable Also in an entire conference this February on the habitability of Mars surface no one presented paper on lethality of cosmic radiation for the life there I haven t yet listened to all the video presentations so don t know if the radiation flux was ever mentioned at all but for sure it wasn t considered enough of an issue for habitability of Mars surface worth having a separate paper about it in the conference If the old paper was still valid you would expect something like limitations for life on Mars surface due to cosmic radiation