one of the biggest assumptions made by biologists is that removing tissues or cells from its life source has no impact on the sample or its chemistry
FFS. The article waxes on about Hillman's "honest" and "honesty" and "intellectual honesty" and "uncompromising honesty" ad nauseum. Yet it contains flat-out (and rather obvious) lies like this. No, in fact, scientists do not believe that removing cells from living organism has no impact. Actually, some cells and tissues cannot even be cultured in a lab. Of course it has an impact.
inner structures (also known as organelles) deduced by electron microscope are artefacts (products) of the methods employed to prepare the sample for viewing.
That's remarkable. How can electron microscopes affect the imaging of organelles under a light microscope? You can see some organelles even at pretty low resolution in a high school classroom. Kids do it all the time. You can not only see the cell membrane and nucleus but also vacuoles, chloroplasts, even mitochondria (though the smaller ones require a pretty expensive microscope that you might not have access to until undergrad). And why do we observe the same structures in confocal laser microscopy, fluorescence microscopy, phase-contrast imaging, etc?
Until the early 1940s, before the use of electron microscope to study cells, it was agreed that all living cells were round or spherical entities consisting of an outer or cell membrane enclosing the sphere, mitochondria, a nucleus, cytoplasm and a nucleus membrane.
Uh, no. Prokaryotes were known in the 1930s ffs. They were known in the 1730s, in fact. So were erythrocytes (though they sometimes called them "red corpuscles"). Also, mitochondria are organelles. So is the cell nucleus.
in different sections taken of the same membrane, the thickness of the layers should vary and the amount of layers visible should also vary
No. Think about taking different slices through a sphere. Even if the cut is very far from meeting the center of the sphere, it will slice through the membrane at an appreciable angle. Only if you have a slice very near the edge of the sphere does the angle get small and the two lines start to get significantly farther apart. You won't see those images, since they barely show any part of the organelle at all. The least distance between them occurs when the cut intercepts the center of the sphere, and even that is wide enough to observe (and is close to what is typically shown in research papers and such). The "amount of layers" cannot possibly vary unless you somehow slice right between them and only get one layer in your sample. What your illustration shows is someone looking at the sample from different angles. But we always look perpendicular to the cut.
I mean, the whole article is like this. You aren't accurately describing Hillman's work at all. You are making him look like an idiot, in fact. He did not doubt the existence of organelles. He did not claim that sometimes two sides of the membrane should merge into one. What he claimed was that the thickness of the membrane should not appear to be consistent, but should be wider in some sections than others. And . . . that is what he observed. But about 80% of his observations had nearly the same thickness, which he declared impossible (not sure what he based that conclusion on). But as a matter of fact, the thickness of membranes is an intense field of study and has been for decades. We don't just use electron microscopy to observe this but X-ray scattering, neutron scattering, and even electron tomography. Tomographic measurements reveal the three-dimensional structure of the membrane, including variations in thickness. How do you explain Glushkova, Böhm, and Beck's claim that they "identified consistent thickness differences not only between organelle membranes but also within the bounds of individual organelles"?
Picking out an individual pariah to base your whole view on is not honest. Misreading both his work and the works of others is not good research. You really need to rethink your approach.
EDIT: Proof that you can see the ER with light microscopy.
And therefore all of cellular biology is bunk, because they thought "Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" and thought it meant "All other organelles are fake."
FFS. The article waxes on about Hillman's "honest" and "honesty" and "intellectual honesty" and "uncompromising honesty" ad nauseum. Yet it contains flat-out (and rather obvious) lies like this. No, in fact, scientists do not believe that removing cells from living organism has no impact. Actually, some cells and tissues cannot even be cultured in a lab. Of course it has an impact.
That's remarkable. How can electron microscopes affect the imaging of organelles under a light microscope? You can see some organelles even at pretty low resolution in a high school classroom. Kids do it all the time. You can not only see the cell membrane and nucleus but also vacuoles, chloroplasts, even mitochondria (though the smaller ones require a pretty expensive microscope that you might not have access to until undergrad). And why do we observe the same structures in confocal laser microscopy, fluorescence microscopy, phase-contrast imaging, etc?
Uh, no. Prokaryotes were known in the 1930s ffs. They were known in the 1730s, in fact. So were erythrocytes (though they sometimes called them "red corpuscles"). Also, mitochondria are organelles. So is the cell nucleus.
No. Think about taking different slices through a sphere. Even if the cut is very far from meeting the center of the sphere, it will slice through the membrane at an appreciable angle. Only if you have a slice very near the edge of the sphere does the angle get small and the two lines start to get significantly farther apart. You won't see those images, since they barely show any part of the organelle at all. The least distance between them occurs when the cut intercepts the center of the sphere, and even that is wide enough to observe (and is close to what is typically shown in research papers and such). The "amount of layers" cannot possibly vary unless you somehow slice right between them and only get one layer in your sample. What your illustration shows is someone looking at the sample from different angles. But we always look perpendicular to the cut.
I mean, the whole article is like this. You aren't accurately describing Hillman's work at all. You are making him look like an idiot, in fact. He did not doubt the existence of organelles. He did not claim that sometimes two sides of the membrane should merge into one. What he claimed was that the thickness of the membrane should not appear to be consistent, but should be wider in some sections than others. And . . . that is what he observed. But about 80% of his observations had nearly the same thickness, which he declared impossible (not sure what he based that conclusion on). But as a matter of fact, the thickness of membranes is an intense field of study and has been for decades. We don't just use electron microscopy to observe this but X-ray scattering, neutron scattering, and even electron tomography. Tomographic measurements reveal the three-dimensional structure of the membrane, including variations in thickness. How do you explain Glushkova, Böhm, and Beck's claim that they "identified consistent thickness differences not only between organelle membranes but also within the bounds of individual organelles"?
Picking out an individual pariah to base your whole view on is not honest. Misreading both his work and the works of others is not good research. You really need to rethink your approach.
EDIT: Proof that you can see the ER with light microscopy.
What is the central thesis here? I don’t have time to sift through this massive document. That the preparation of cells for EM leads to artefacts?
And therefore all of cellular biology is bunk, because they thought "Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" and thought it meant "All other organelles are fake."
Well.... I just lost 5 minutes of my life that I'll never get back.
and the comments are filled to the brim with mental illness. it's like a train wreck you can't look away from. very troubling