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Why did some scientists initially question whether the Golgi apparatus was real?

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Diagram of the Golgi apparatus showing its stacked, curved membranes with labeled parts including cisternae, cis face, trans face, lumen, and various vesicles involved in cellular transport and secretion. — Golgi apparatus A membrane-bound organelle of eukaryotic cells, the Golgi apparatus is made up of a series of flattened, stacked pouches called cisternae that function as a series of compartments that progressively refine and direct cellular products to their proper destinations. .

When the Italian cytologist Camillo Golgi first identified the "internal reticular apparatus" in 1897, he used a specialized staining technique known as the reazione nera (black reaction), which involved fixing nervous tissue with potassium dichromate and silver nitrate.12

Some scientists initially questioned the existence of the Golgi apparatus because they believed the structure was not a genuine biological component of the cell. Instead, they argued that the observed reticular pattern was merely an artifact caused by free-floating particles of the metal stain used in Golgi's procedure. The reality of the organelle was not definitively confirmed until the 1950s, when the development and use of the electron microscope allowed researchers to visualize its true structure.12