No New Neurons? No Problem!

This answer was written in response to the following Quora question:

New research has found no neurogenesis in human adults, could this mean there is none or could it mean that neural stem cells are undetectable with the used techniques? What are your thoughts on this?

It’s good that you’re thinking of such things, since that is exactly what researchers themselves have to do, and what reviewers do. In order to show that the method works, there have to be adequate controls as part of the experiment.

And this is in fact the case. The paper would not have been published without controls.