Jonathan Thomas describes the Stowers Institute's unusual research model — focusing on animals that evolved resistance to diseases humans suffer from, and openly publishing failed hypotheses alongside successes so the broader scientific community doesn't duplicate wasted effort. ✦ AI generated
Jonathan Thomas · The Compound · 2026-07-17 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 73:09
“Tell us a little bit about some of your wacky science experiments and what the idea is behind them.”
Almost everybody who makes a discovery loves to tell the world about it and publish a paper, but we also talk about our failures. If we have a hypothesis that doesn't pan out, we actually publish that as well... we don't want the world to waste resources replicating a hypothesis that we've tested and learned that it did not work.
verbatim transcript · starts at 73:09
73:09that we make available to the world for free so that everybody else can build upon it. And then the other thing that we do that's very unique most of everybody who does makes a discovery loves to tell the world about it and publish a paper but we also talk about our failures. Well if we have a hypothesis that doesn't pan out. We actually publish that as well. Why do we
73:33do that is even though we're competing with all these other organizations for new scientific knowledge, we don't want people, we don't want the world to waste resources replicating a hypothesis that we've tested and learn that it did not work. So we publish both our successes for people to build upon >> and our failures. Don't do this. We did it already. It doesn't work. Here's our method. Here's how we know it doesn't
73:59work. >> Yeah. >> That's really cool. That's it's so it's altruism within altruism. It's like altruism squared. >> Yes. [laughter] >> Here are some of the things that have come out of your uh your organization's research and labs. Uh plenarian flatworms. We you guys precisely identified a subset of stem cells that can regenerate an entire organism from a single cell. I don't know how that's applicable to me.
74:26Do I eat the flatworm or tell tell us what the importance of that research? Sounds like a big deal was made out of it when you did it. >> Yeah. So, um there's all sorts of organisms in the world that if you cut them in half, cut off their arm, cut off their head head, arms, legs, they completely regenerate. Yeah. >> Uh they grow a new one. Uh organs as
74:47well. Humans can't do that. But understanding how these organisms can lose an organ, lose a limb, you can reduce something down to just like you cut a lizard's tail off and it grows a new tail. >> Yeah. And there's all sorts of them that do that. So we we're looking at it for the sake of organ regeneration. Uh for the sake of helping people regenerate with all these organisms or animals