Why are Mars results always “possibly” this, “may have had” that?

Question

Every time I read an article, whether in popular news or an actual scientific article, about Mars, it basically always says something vague along the lines of Mars possibly has water here, may have had water/minerals/whatever there.It's incredibly frustrating reading!There have been many Mars rovers and orbiters. What, if anything, have they conclusively proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt? Why is it so apparently incredibly difficult to prove whether Mars has/has had water or not?In case it's not obvious, I know nothing about astronomy, physics, geology, biology etc, so please don't be snarky. I just genuinely don't understand what's so difficult.

h2odragon · Accepted Answer

Unlike some other fields, there's no money or other immediate advantage in appearing to be authoritative here, so the normal scientific reticence is on display because no one wants to have to say, later, that they were wrong.And there's truly very little data to be had and what there is "supports" different interpretations but doesn't exclude others. Similar to how Radio astronomers have all these lovely maps and reams of signals and they're still "making up" most of their inputs via interpolation and squinting at samples from alternate eyeballs.

mrspeaker · Answer

Do you have some examples of these articles?