It's not a red flag, it's reality. Biology is complicated, and no matter what the synthetic biologists tell you :) You use independent methods and good contro

It's not a red flag, it's reality. Biology is complicated, and no matter what the synthetic biologists tell you :) You use independent methods and good controls to deal with this. This is nothing new, it's been the basis of experimental science for decades. If you're allowed to publish without doing this, the field has failed. Molecular biology, in particular, has flourished because of the effectiveness of genetic controls. Mutants are highly reproducible (you just send out seed, cultures, or live specimens), verifiable (sequencing), and combinatoric (crossing).