HN title at the moment is: Researchers Find Microbe Capable of Producing Oxygen from Martian Soil
Article title at the moment is: Microbe That Could Turn Martian Dust into Oxygen
Neither of those are particularly misleading, but requires you to read it carefully I suppose, otherwise it can misleading I suppose. I guess "Martian Dust" is the most misleading part of the quote, as the soil isn't actually Martian of origin, but actually "materials that are similar to Martian soil".
Both titles are very misleading, because neither "oxygen is produced from Martian soil" nor "Martian dust is turned into oxygen".
As I have said, the oxygen comes only from water, which is missing on Mars, unlike the abundant Martian soil or Martian dust.
So the "microbe" does not solve the problem of oxygen production, which is obtaining water. With water, making oxygen by electrolysis is trivial and a problem solved long ago.
The cyanobacterium can make various useful organic substances, like proteins and vitamins. The fact that it also makes some oxygen is a minor additional advantage.
Even if such cyanobacteria will be grown on Mars, most of the oxygen will be made by electrolysis anyway, because the efficiency from solar light to free oxygen is much better and the photovoltaic cells continue to function in a much wider range of temperatures.
> As I have said, the oxygen comes only from water, which is missing on Mars
The title nor the article itself doesn't claim otherwise, unless I'm missing something?
It's also not claiming that the microbe somehow solve the problem of obtaining water, or anything else.
The only thing they claim is that this specific microbe, under the right circumstances, can produce oxygen while it grows in Martian-like soil. That's what the article claims, and the titles.
You have reproduced yourself the 2 titles, which contain:
"Microbe Capable of Producing Oxygen from Martian Soil"
"Microbe That Could Turn Martian Dust into Oxygen"
The words "producing X from Y" and "turn Y into X" are extremely clear and they do not admit alternative interpretations. They both claim that X=oxygen comes from Y=soil|dust, contrary to what you say, that the titles do not contain such claims.
I normally avoid to follow the fashion of accusing posters of being AI bots, but such a failure of comprehension could be explained only for an AI bot, or perhaps for someone who understands very little English, but the latter explanation does not match the correct English of the message.
Perhaps you have used an English translation service that has confused you?
You probably know that cyanobacteria produce most(?)[1] of the oxygen on Earth, moreover the plants (and algae) use a "trapped cyanobacteria" to produce the oxygen. So all the oxygen on Earth is produced by free or trapped cyanobacteria. Moreover, when cyanobacteria started to produce oxygen they killed most of the previous bacterias. So we agree it's not surprising that a cyanobacteria can produce oxygen.
You probably know that in photosynthesis the light is used to extract the oxygen from the water, but most people think the oxygen is extracted from the CO2. It super non intuitive. Well, after the oxygen is extracted, there is hydrogen as leftover (as NADH, not as H2). This is used after a few super weird steps to transform the CO2 into water and sugar.
The article does not discuss about the CO2. I guess it's a problem if the cyanobacteria has no CO2 to dump the hydrogen, but I'm not sure[2]. The press article links to another press article that links to a review in a journal that links to a few research articles by the same author. I only read up to the review, and they don't mention the CO2. Life is too shot to search and read all the research articles, so I'll never know. My guess is that they just tested this in Earth atmosphere, but Mars has also CO2 (not sure about the partial pressure), so I guess CO2 is not a problem. So CO2 is important and it's not mentioned anywhere.
More importantly is nitrogen in a useful form (not as N2). I guess Martian soil has no nitrates or ammonia to be absorbed by the cyanobacteria. According to Wikipedia only a few cyanobacteria can fixate nitrogen, and apparently not this cyanobacteria. So with only the nutrients from Martian soil the cyanobacteria will not be able to make proteins and die after a while. It's a very important fertilizer for farms. So biologically available nitrogen is important and it's not mentioned anywhere.
In conclusion, unless someone has a strong background in chemistry or biology or something, it's very difficult to see how misleading an inaccurate is the title in spite they are not a bot.
[1] IIRC "most", but I can't find a source now.
[2] Can plants grow in pure nitrogen+soil+water? It look´s like an experiment for Cody's Lab.
Agree with that interpretation. Perhaps "Microbe extracts oxygen from the water in Martian soils" would be short and intriguing enough to be correct and interesting enough to click on!
Article title at the moment is: Microbe That Could Turn Martian Dust into Oxygen
Neither of those are particularly misleading, but requires you to read it carefully I suppose, otherwise it can misleading I suppose. I guess "Martian Dust" is the most misleading part of the quote, as the soil isn't actually Martian of origin, but actually "materials that are similar to Martian soil".