Quoth the New York Times on both perfectly valid research being ignored and how a field becomes “hot”.

The usual pattern is taking place here: first, someone comes up with new results which the scientific community either ignores or rushes to discredit because they’ve somehow got the idea that skepticism (essentially making themselves unreceptive to ideas that don’t fit with their dogma) is the best way to evaluate scientific discoveries:

“But when those tools emerged in the early 1990s, Dr. Dick found stem cells in acute myelogenous leukemia, a blood cancer. He reported that such cells made up just 1 percent of the leukemia cells and that those were the only ones that could form tumors in mice.

Yet Dr. Dick’s research, Dr. Wicha said, “was pretty much ignored.” Cancer researchers, he said, were not persuaded — and even if they had accepted the research — doubted that the results would hold for solid tumors, like those of the breast, colon, prostate or brain.”

Potential avenue that opens up all sorts of treatment possibilities presented, but they “weren’t persuaded”. Nice.

Now, wait for it…

“That changed in 1994, when Dr. Wicha and a colleague, Dr. Michael Clarke, who is now at Stanford, reported finding cancerous stem cells in breast cancer patients.

“The paper hit me like a bombshell,” said Robert Weinberg, a professor of biology at M.I.T. and a leader in cancer research. “To my mind, that is conceptually the most important paper in cancer over the past decade.””

Ah, so you “weren’t persuaded” when one person found it in AML, but if it’s in breasts, well, that’s a whole different story! Now it’s the most important paper in the past decade! After all, even if stem cells may not form in solid tumors, there must be no value in treating what is probably the most virulent form of leukemia, right? (I had described this exact sociological phenomenon of violent swings in opinion with new presentations just yesterday on a Slashdot discussion thread – also, why the disporportional emphasis on breast cancer? There are other cancers that kill many more people, have much higher fatality rates, and strike both sexes equally).

Now we see an idea becoming “hot”:

“Dr. Weinberg and others began pursuing the stem-cell hypothesis, and researchers now say they have found cancerous stem cells in cancers of the colon, head and neck, lung, prostate, brain, and pancreas.

Symposiums were held. Leading journals published paper after paper.”

Etc.

It’s a good thing they’re taking this theory seriously. It’s a bad thing that they ignored it for as long as they did because they were too convinced that they already knew everything to take a valuable hypothesis seriously. Sure, demand proof if you’d like. But don’t take absence of it or a perceived lack of quality as evidence that the hypothesis is wrong. Science is not law; the burden of proof can be taken up by others if they are not satisfied with the evidence because ultimately, we are all in this together.

Here’s another interesting tidbit from a linked article, which in my mind supports my theory that one tumor could supplant another if injected into the same site:

“They then injected laboratory-grown cancer cells into the benign tumors, which spread swiftly throughout the teratoma clusters. The result, they believe, is an ideal test bed for anticancer agents.”

This in turn supports my idea that it is possible to alter the characteristics of a tumor by harvesting and injecting particular cells. Selecting the weak in this manner can possibly make tumors more sensitive to treatment.

Still waiting on the equipment and training – or collaboration with someone who has such equipment and training – to actually test that one 🙂