Did Viking Landers Unintentionally Destroy Martian Life?

Astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch suggests that NASA's Viking landers may have inadvertently killed potential Martian life by using water-based experiments, which could have been harmful to any life forms adapted to Mars' hyperarid conditions. He proposes that future missions should adopt a "follow the salts" strategy instead of the traditional "follow the water" approach, as Martian organisms might extract moisture from the atmosphere through salts, similar to extremophiles in Earth's Atacama Desert.