An article in
Discover Magazine details some of the practices that occurred for 50 years
in cancer research that both slowed and misled cancer research for decades. In
cancer research, scientists use cancer cell lines (cells that contain a
particular type of cancer) taken from tumors infected with the cancer in order
to test possible treatments. The problem is that it is very easy for these cell
lines to become contaminated, thereby changing the characteristics of the cell
line. For years scientists used contaminated cell lines for their research,
with numerous publications occurring based on false lines.
