An Impostor Cell Line Set Back Breast Cancer Research (2017)

Since cancer is considered "many different diseases" now, this is basically saying these people are studying the entirely wrong disease.

Its like if someone told you they study measles but then you check what they are doing and see its actually heart attacks.

And read the comments. People who seem to be biomedical researchers are claiming this isn't a big deal and all cell lines are essentially the same anyway, etc. Its like they have never had a quantitative thought in their lives.

EDIT:

And then the other comments about how biomedical researchers dont get paid enough... If only they had more money they wouldnt study the wrong cells (which doesnt matter anyway somehow) for decades after it was a known issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

And linked under see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_contaminated_cell_line...

This is a fascinating yet unfortunate story. Working with cell lines can be so messy that this isn't entirely surprising, but it's still not something anyone wants to hear.

As a side note: the lab profiled in the story that exposed this mistake was run by Pat Brown -- the head of Impossible Foods.