Not always. There are many unknowns in research you can't control for. Some assays / models just aren't that reliable even though they are gold standard. Someti

Not always. There are many unknowns in research you can't control for. Some assays / models just aren't that reliable even though they are gold standard. Sometimes the equipment and reagents you use produce unexplainable results. For example, a lab I worked with was trying to make a particular type of immune cell less "aggressive". They tried all kinds of genetic modifications, hit it with different cytokines, changed its nutrients, etc, but nothing worked. Then they used a different flask, and the results were amazing. This was a reproducible phenomenon. They had no way of knowing the equipment they used would change the immunological phenotype of their cells, but it did. There are so many confounding factors like this: reagent source, air quality in animal facilities, how you use a pipette, etc