Standards in History: Evaluating Success in Stem Cell Experiments

Abstract

The primary aim of stem cell biology is to harness the capacities of specific cell types for use in regenerative medicine. Experiments in this field are oriented primarily toward this practical goal, and its exemplary successes are practical accomplishments, such as creation of cell lines with desirable properties or regeneration of animal tissues in vivo. The question therefore arises: to what epistemic standard are stem cell experiments responsible? At the most general level, of course, stem cell experiments are responsible to evidential standards. Yet what this amounts to is not clear. Rigorous philosophical accounts of the hypothesis-evidence relation represent the relata as statements describing states of affairs, distinguishable from an array of alternatives. But in stem cell biology, statements of this kind are seldom made explicit. Major successes in the field take the form of new experimental methods and their products: mammalian cells with therapeutically-interesting properties and more efficient or less controversial ways of engineering them. This paper uses a historical approach to explicate a robust epistemic standard for experimental success in stem cell biology. This case demonstrates the importance of social-epistemic standards as part of a critical approach to contemporary biomedicine.