Concluding Remarks

Abstract

Professor Patrick I. Keeling in the University of British Columbia, Canada, an active researcher on the secondary endosymbiosis, wrote an interesting opinion about the endosymbiotic theory of organelle origin (Keeling 2014), stating that a knowledge bias interferes with our thinking on the endosymbiotic theory and the origin of eukaryotic cells. This is a problem in the history of science, in which scientific interpretation is affected by preceding discoveries. He cited the schema notion proposed by a psychologist Jean Piaget. According to this theory, all data are interpreted according to the schema, and conflicting data are neglected. In other words, we have a cognitive inertia, in which accepted theory is hard to deny. In contrast, affirming accepted theory is not considered a novel scientific study. The presence of various conflicting proposals on the origin of eukaryotic cells is, according to Keeling, a result of inability of publishing papers supporting accepted theory. Three possibilities exist on the first branching group among eukaryotes, bacteria, and archaea, but all of them have inconsistencies, he affirmed, because all interpretations are affected by the initial impact of the contrast eukaryotes/prokaryotes.