natural born killers?

part five: a critique of the method of isolation

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.

- Daniel J. Boorstin

part one . . . part two . . . part two-b . . . part three . . . part four-a . . . part four-b

one of the methods for proving the existence of a virus is “isolation.” but what are virologists doing in the lab and how does that prove viruses exist?

according to the bobs, virologists take a sample from a sick person (assumed to be infected with a virus) and put it into a petri dish with some culture cells — typically kidney cells from african green monkeys, called vero cells.

per our working definition of a virus, these things are parasites. laypersons like myself assume the virus immediately attacks those host cells, like natural born killers. but before the cells die in that petri dish there may be, according to the bobs, some shenanigans afoot.

the bobs claim the virologists use cells that may be diseased, starve them of nutrients and poison them with kidney-toxic antibiotics.

how are the virologists certain it is a virus killing the cells rather than the experiment itself? virologists added everything except a human sample to the petri dish and the cells survived, right?

stephan lanka claims to have performed this experiment, which showed that even without any human sample, the experiment itself caused the cells to die.

are virologists doing controlled experiments? the bobs claim none of the papers purported to prove the existence of viruses describe any controlled experiments. are the bobs mistaken?

if all factors in the sample or in the experiment have not been controlled, how exactly does “isolation” prove viruses exist?