My wife works in cell biology and worked with stem cells for the last several years. Differentiation protocols are very difficult. She was working on turning IPS cells into lung epithelial cells so she could study the effects of CFTR malfunction with genetically matched control cells.
The differentiation protocol she was trying to replicate is several month long protocol. Because each cell line has unique properties protocols must be "optimized" for each line before it will work. She ended up switching to primary lung epithelial cells for her experiments because the differentiation protocol was too difficult to replicate.
I guess my point is cell biology is very tricky and stem cell biology seems (from an outside perspective) to be even trickier. However, that isn't a reason not to be sceptical -- it just means it may take some time to really answer the question of whether or not this acid bath protocol works.
This was my thought. So far 10 attempts to replicate it failing isn't a good sign, but I'm willing to bet, based on my track record when I did wet lab research, that the lab that produced the study (if indeed it is correct) failed more than 10 times.
The status quo by definition has a lot of support in scientific literature. Sure, you could right a botched paper supporting it, but people would basically ignore it because it would be a bad paper (though a peer reviewer would likely tear it to shreds anyway).
> The status quo by definition has a lot of support in scientific literature.
Not really. Science is by its very nature subversive, and as many Nobels have been awarded for work that falsified the status quo as confirmed it.
When the Michelson-Morley experiment falsified the luminiferous ether, much of physics fell into limbo (without a credible "status quo"), until Einstein's relativity theory offered an alternative explanation for electromagnetic propagation. But Einstein's proposal was met with incredulity until very good evidence confirmed it. That's science at its best -- perpetual doubt and skepticism.
I think we're using two different definitions of "status quo". Science most definitely has a status quo - that's the established theoretical basis for various fields.
That of course can be very different to the cultural status quo.
> Science most definitely has a status quo - that's the established theoretical basis for various fields.
Yes, that's true, but to call a falsifiable theory a status quo is to imply that it represents an anchor, a stabilizing influence, rather than a tempting moving target for skeptical scientists, its true role.
> What about credible results- should things require less evidence if they support the status quo?
Not in science. The problem with accepting credible results is that they may create an atmosphere of credibility where none really exists, and over time become the status quo without any real basis.
There are any number of stories in science where an expected value was reliably detected in a replication only because it was expected, and later, after the expected value changed, so did the replication results.
Remember that, in science, the null hypothesis is the default position -- in other words, there's no effect until persuasive evidence contradicts that assumption.
I don't know a lot about biology, but I do know a lot about proofs, provenance, zero-knowledge, etc. I wonder if there is some way, in an experiment of this kind, to tell whether the embryonic stem cells obtained are "really" derived from an adult mouse, as opposed to being extracted from an ordinary mouse embryo. In that case, third parties could verify the claim just by looking at the cell cultures. But I assume that they are actually completely normal-looking, as this is the point of the protocol.
Otherwise, perhaps it is possible for the provenance to be deliberately marked in some way that is resistant to forgery. For example, the adult cells used could be provided by some independent source who is generally trusted not to "leak" the corresponding embryonic cells. Then, if you produce ESCs with the right genome (which is easy to test), you must have done it using adult cells alone. If a clever and unscrupulous biologist could forge that - say by taking a normal ESC and injecting foreign genetic material, or by cloning the mouse and harvesting the new embryo - then perhaps some alternative marker could be devised. It would have to be something that could be introduced into the adult mouse cells, but couldn't be easily extracted, swamped by a new marker, or transferred in the cloning process. Or we could cross-check against other signs that those methods might have been used - some biological equivalent of tamper-evidence, maybe?
Not a biologist or chemist (but have worked a lot of them). I was very suspicious of "acid bath" being a secret sauce. Chemists and biologists always work through PH range studies early and often. It is one of the things that is very easy to control and measure, so they all hope it will have a useful effect (and check for it).
The differentiation protocol she was trying to replicate is several month long protocol. Because each cell line has unique properties protocols must be "optimized" for each line before it will work. She ended up switching to primary lung epithelial cells for her experiments because the differentiation protocol was too difficult to replicate.
I guess my point is cell biology is very tricky and stem cell biology seems (from an outside perspective) to be even trickier. However, that isn't a reason not to be sceptical -- it just means it may take some time to really answer the question of whether or not this acid bath protocol works.