It sounds like your concern is more with the language of Linda Geddes, who wrote the New Scientist article, than with the scientists. Are you sure your caution shouldn't instead be more applied to science journalists?
For example, the "spark of life" is from the New Scientist, not from the researchers, and the word "spark" doesn't exist in the underlying paper except in the references, in the title of another paper.
Nor does the paper say something as simple as "when you heat up sugars ...". Instead:
> Due to the complexity of the metabolic pathways, it has been argued that metabolism‐like chemical reaction sequences are unlikely to be catalysed by simple environmental catalysts (Lazcano & Miller, 1999; Anet, 2004). However, to our knowledge, this possibility has not been tested systematically, and at present stage, thermodynamic approaches are not predictive about which molecules form in the presence of simple catalysts from a precursor (Amend et al, 2013). Here, we studied the reactivity of intermediates of glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway upon replicating a plausible chemical composition of the prebiotic Archean ocean. We report that under these conditions, the intermediates of the two pathways undergo non‐enzymatic interconversion reactions and form neighbouring intermediates that constitute these pathways in modern cells.
That is, the goal was to look for 'metabolism‐like chemical reaction sequences', and not the creation of more complex sugars.
For example, the "spark of life" is from the New Scientist, not from the researchers, and the word "spark" doesn't exist in the underlying paper except in the references, in the title of another paper.
Nor does the paper say something as simple as "when you heat up sugars ...". Instead:
> Due to the complexity of the metabolic pathways, it has been argued that metabolism‐like chemical reaction sequences are unlikely to be catalysed by simple environmental catalysts (Lazcano & Miller, 1999; Anet, 2004). However, to our knowledge, this possibility has not been tested systematically, and at present stage, thermodynamic approaches are not predictive about which molecules form in the presence of simple catalysts from a precursor (Amend et al, 2013). Here, we studied the reactivity of intermediates of glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway upon replicating a plausible chemical composition of the prebiotic Archean ocean. We report that under these conditions, the intermediates of the two pathways undergo non‐enzymatic interconversion reactions and form neighbouring intermediates that constitute these pathways in modern cells.
That is, the goal was to look for 'metabolism‐like chemical reaction sequences', and not the creation of more complex sugars.