As SPACE.com reported in November, Doyle and his colleagues are hot on the trail of some possible Earth-like planets around a binary star system known as CM Draconis. Doyle said he has some promising data, and that he and colleagues have developed a detection technique that is now capable of finding Earth-sized planets.

He was clear, however, that the existing data, which shows two potential planets roughly 2.5 times the size of Earth, cannot be considered real evidence until more data can be collected, possibly providing confirmation.

That won't be possible until this spring when CM Draconis is in a favorable position for observation.

An article and graphic that appeared Jan. 7 on The Sunday Times' Web site claimed Doyle and his colleagues had found "a solar system with two rocky planets similar in size to the Earth."

Doyle's reaction: "Although it was well written, [the article] contained a major flaw -- no such planetary detections have been confirmed to date."

In an interview Thursday, Doyle said he didn't want to stop people from being enthusiastic about the search. "But at the same time, when we say there's a planet, we want people to believe us and we want to absolutely nail it."

It is of course possible, he said, that the data will turn out to be incorrect.

It's common for scientists to withhold interesting and potentially important data while they painstakingly piece together additional information. In this case, Doyle and his colleagues have discussed their preliminary data in the scientific community, another common practice that helps researchers check their ideas before taking them public.

"Our claims are backed up with two candidate planets at the 2.5 Earth-radii size and one giant planet in the range of about two Jupiter-masses," Doyle said. "However, we have clearly stated that these are only candidates and will absolutely need observational confirmation."

The observations of CM Draconis have been continuing off and on for six years. Along with European researcher Hans J. Deeg and others, Doyle hunts for dips in starlight that indicate a planet is passing in front of the two stars that make up the binary system.

This transit method, as it is called, had its first success last November in a finding released by another group of planet hunters. But the planet they found was much larger than Earth.

Deeg and Doyle have refined the method to find smaller planets. They take several readings over many days and add them together, boosting otherwise imperceptible signals to detectable levels. They have compiled reams of data on a CM Draconis, a mere 54 light-years away, and are optimistic that they may have found something.

"If someone asked me right now, I'd say it could go either way," Doyle said.

Doyle was disappointed that the reporter of the inaccurate story had not contacted him.

"I was on travel for two weeks and was never able to talk with [the reporter], or I would have been most happy to set him straight on what we had and had not discovered," Doyle said.

If and when Earth-like planets are found, the implications will be huge. A planet the size of Earth, orbiting the right distance from a star or a binary star, could potentially harbor life. That search, however, would involve a whole new set of challenges to existing technology, researchers say.

Click here to learn more about the search for Earth-like planets.