 There are different interpretations of this episode to be found in the literature. One of the oldest is Rasmussen (1993), who basically offered a sociological explanation for the rise and fall of the mesosome. This account has been widely criticized (see Rasmussen 2001 for a more recent defense). Others have tried to show that this case exhibits some methodological standard in action. On Culp’s (1994) account, the case demonstrates the relevance of the standard of robustness in actual scientific practice. According to Culp, the mesosome was accepted as a real entity so long as a robust (i.e., diverse and independently theory-dependent) body of data provided signs of their existence. When the winds changed and the evidence against the mesosome became more robust than the evidence in its favor, it was dropped by biologists.