On the serendipitous accidental discovery in science

Louis Pasteur claimed that accidental discoveries also require a prepared mind, is this always the case?

A very common phenomenon among scientists is that they try to solve a scientific problem in a deliberate and focused way and in the process an accidental discovery occurs that has nothing to do with the trend to solve the original problem. The subject of scientific discoveries by way of accidental discovery, known as serendipity, was analyzed in detail at the theoretical level by Kantorovich and Naman, and later Kantorovich reviewed the mechanism of the serendipity process.  

Let's recall that the term "serendipity" is derived from the ancient name of the country Serendip today - Sri Lanka. The writer Horace Walpole writes to his friend Sir Horace Mann in 1754 about a story called "The Three Princes of Serendip" (a story of the type of "One Thousand and One Nights"). The story is about three princes whose hobby was discovering discoveries they weren't looking for in the first place. Based on this story, Walpole defines the concept of "serendipity" and tries to explain its principle with admiration. He points out that serendipitous discovery is based on accidental discoveries and sagacity. He refers to the subject of accidental discovery with English humor and writes that one of the princes discovered, for example, that a mule blind in the right eye repeated the same path because the grass was eaten on the left side more than on the right side and therefore the condition of the grass on the left was worse than on the right. And he asks Horace Mann "Do you now understand what serendipity is"? Walpole was satisfied with the definition of serendipity and enjoyed the stories of the funny and foolish discoveries of the three princes. He and others did not associate serendipity with the world of science and technology, because technological development in his time was limited and the range of scientific discoveries was relatively low compared to our time. Also, the serendipity did not win scientific headlines, mainly because scientists do not report in scientific articles about accidental discoveries but present them as a finding of a planned and deliberate experiment. Walpole did not interpret the concept of wisdom (sagacity) its meaning in the definition of Webster's dictionary is "the exercise of logical judgment and a deep and sharp perception". This skill is needed to identify the serendipitous discovery, and without it, its identification will not take place. To this must be added the activation of an associative link with previous knowledge and experience, which make their contribution if they exist. In 1854, Louis Pasteur referred to this by saying that "in the field of observations, chance supports only the prepared mind". This is the brain in which previous knowledge and experience are stored, the sagacity - a bridge between the prepared mind and the accidental discovery. In this article we will not discuss the processes that lead to the serendipitous discovery such as wandering, but the ways and circumstances in which the discovery was discovered and what is the useful and beneficial achievement derived from the serendipitous discovery.   

Is Pasteur's statement about the prepared mind true for every serendipitous discovery?

It turns out not. The discovery of asparts (Table 1, No. 1) is one of the most blind scientific discoveries, in the absence of a prepared mind. The chemist James Schlatter did not intend to develop a substitute for sugar at all, but made attempts to produce a tetrapeptide as part of a project to treat ulcers in the digestive system. When the scientist tried to heat one of the intermediate products - the dipeptide methyl ester of aspartyl-phenyl and the mixture was accidentally spilled by his hands. He licked his fingers and immediately felt a strange sweet taste. He thought at first that some sugar had stuck to his hands earlier. He repeated the accidental tasting and felt the same sweetness he had tasted the first time. From here began the development of the dipeptide for the artificial sweetener that was named aspartame and is 200 times sweeter than sugar. Its use is common in soft drinks, sweets, chewing gum, diet desserts and more. Aspartame has been widely used except in phenylketone-urea patients. The researcher's mind in this example was not prepared for the accidental discovery.

The discovery of penicillin - a double accidental discovery

In most other cases in the history of science, logical judgment and sharp perception on the one hand and the prepared mind on the other play an important role in identifying the serendipitous discovery. A typical example of this is the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming. In fact, it is a double accidental discovery. First, in 1922, Fleming, who had a cold, cultured a liquid discharge from his nose. As he examined the yellow growth of bacteria in the petri dish, a tear fell from his eye into the dish. The next day he noticed a surface free of bacteria where the tear had landed. His conclusion was that the tear contained an enzyme that caused lysis - the discharge of the culture. He named it Lyzom. The useful value of this discovery was marginal, but it was an important precursor to the discovery of penicillin. In 1928, Fleming was involved in the study of the flu and in one of the petri dishes in which he seeded bacteria, a mycelium of a fungus grew around which the surface was free of bacteria. It became clear to him that fungal spores accidentally fell into the petri dish. He recalled the previous discovery of lysozymes, and concluded that this was a substance from the fungus that killed the staphylococcus bacteria that had grown on the plate. Hence reason connected the past experience with lysozymes and the accidental discovery of the action of the fungus. If it weren't for the intelligence required to connect the two accidental discoveries, the petri dish with the mushroom mycelium would have found its way to the trash can with the thought that mushroom spores had penetrated the bacterial culture and "spoiled" the experiment. The fungus that inhibited the bacteria was defined as a species of Penicillium And the substance that inhibited the growth of bacteria is the antibiotic that was given the name penicillin. Later on, Fleming proved that penicillin is not toxic to animals. Chen and Florey improved the production of the substrate composition of the mushroom culture and located fungal strains high in penicillin in order to increase the efficiency of the yield of this antibiotic. The urgent use of penicillin in World War II saved the lives of many soldiers.

Conduct that will complete the identification of the accidental discovery

Is there a need for conduct that complements the identification of the accidental discovery? We will mention two of them:

A. The obligation to report the accidental discovery

This process is not the lot of the scientist only, but is also found in those who are endowed with the ability to notice an unusual phenomenon and report it, instead of ignoring it.

At the beginning of the 17th century in South America, there was an accidental discovery of quinine, which works as a medicine against malaria. The accidental discovery was probably first made by Indians and became the story of a legend. According to him, one of the Indians in Peru who got malaria and lost his way in the jungles of the Andes mountains, came across a puddle of water and drank from it to quench his thirst. The water was bitter, and he recognized that the bitterness was the same as that of the bark of the cinchona tree which is known among the Indians to be poisonous. His thirst overcame him, so he drank from the water even though he was afraid of its toxicity. To his surprise, a few days later he recovered and told his friends and family about his recovery. The malaria patients among his friends also drank from the water and recovered. Apparently the water contained the bark that fell into it or a cinchona tree collapsed into the puddle, and the quinine in the bark mixed with the water. This discovery became known to the Spanish Jesuit missionaries who were in South America. Following the report of the Indians who recovered from malaria, they brought the cinchona bark to Spain as a source of quinine. It was only in 1820 that quinine was isolated and its synthesis was completed and only in 1944. Quinine became an effective preparation against malaria on a global scale. Its synthetic derivatives were used by Allied soldiers to avoid malaria when they fought the Japanese in World War II in the mosquito-infested jungles of the Far East. It was the ancient "native wisdom" of the Indians that led to the accidental discovery of quinine through that Indian's report to his family about what happened to him. 

Another example of the importance of reporting the accidental discovery: a hospital nurse noticed in a case that neonatal jaundice patients recovered faster when they were near a lighted window. She reported this to her superiors and it turned out that the ultraviolet light broke down the bilirubin into a product that is efficiently excreted from the body. This diagnosis has become a routine treatment for curing neonatal jaundice

B. Determination in accidental discovery research

Edward Jenner from Great Britain heard at the age of 19 that women who milked cows and were infected with cow pox never contracted human pox. At the age of 26 he finished his medical studies, but it wasn't until he was 43 that he decided to devote himself to researching the accidental discovery he heard from a cow milker. He discovered that out of two types of cowpox, only one caused vaccination provided that infection was possible at a certain stage of the disease. The medical establishment did not support his findings, but luckily he was able to demonstrate a vaccine against human smallpox after infecting an eight-year-old boy with a liquid containing cowpox essence. More years passed filled with prestige struggles until Jenner's vaccine against smallpox, an epidemic that killed millions of people, was distributed worldwide. The accidental discovery awaited the "savior" for many years and thanks to Jenner's determination, it received its important application.   

Eureka 

The accidental discovery also refers to the discovery that is in possession of an idea, the fruit of pure thought. An example of conceptual discovery is that of Archimedes. He was tasked with finding a way to determine if the crown for the king's head was made of pure gold or if it also had silver in it. The presence of silver instead of gold will indicate that the goldsmith cheated the king in order to get rich. Archimedes, who began to test the composition of the king's crown, was faced with the question of how to measure the volume of an irregular material such as a crown. Archimedes discovered in the bath that a volume of water equal to the volume of the body can be pushed in the water (the famous "eureka"). He ordered to prepare for him a block of gold and a block of silver the weight of the king's crown. He measured for each block the volume of water pushed out of the water vessels. He found that less water was pushed out of the vessel with the gold nugget compared to the silver. He repeated the experiment with the king's crown (which was equal in weight to the gold or silver nugget) and found that more water was pushed out of the vessel than when measured with the gold nugget and this was the proof that the crown did not contain gold but a mixture of gold and silver, meaning the goldsmith cheated the king.

This accidental discovery was the fruit of pure thought that did not interfere with prior knowledge.

The second example is of a conceptual accidental discovery is that of Friedrich August Kekola. He studied the structure of the benzene molecule and in 1865 he published the theory about this structure. At that time the connection between carbons was unknown. The building was revealed to him in a dream. He saw in his dream a snake holding its tail in its mouth and the resulting annular structure moving in a dizzying motion before his eyes. When Kekula woke up from the dream, the thought flashed in his mind that this is a ring structure of six carbons, the connection between them is cyclic with a double bond and a single bond alternately and they are in fluctuation on the surface of the ring. The contribution of this discovery served as a basis for the development of quantum chemistry.

In the field of experimentation in science, accidental discovery can be divided into two types of systems in which the discovery occurs: 1. Accidental discovery revealed due to an exception to the course of the experiment or a malfunction during its execution 2. Accidental discovery without deviation in experimental conditions and without malfunctions.  

Most of the discoveries are in the West

In light of the diversity in accidental discoveries, it is appropriate to present examples (Table 1) and analyze their distribution into several characteristics:

As expected, most of the accidental discoveries took place in the western countries that are scientifically and technologically developed, USA, UK, France, Italy, Germany. The age of the people who recognized the accidental discovery is very diverse, from young people who were interested in science, research students, junior researchers to senior researchers who already have a considerable scientific contribution behind them. The research conditions of the researchers were also different. Some came to an accidental discovery in a room in their house and turned it into a laboratory, others worked in a laboratory with poor means and some had at their disposal a sophisticated laboratory and a large and diverse staff.

The examples of accidental discovery point to the versatility of the research fields and the ways in which the discoveries were made. Table 1 summarizes examples that constitute a representative sample from a long list of accidental discoveries. Most of the discoveries belong to the field of chemistry in all its branches. The reason for you is that the scope of research and development in the academy and especially in the commercial companies in the field of chemical materials including medical materials is greater than in other fields. As a result, the probability of finding an accidental discovery in chemistry is higher than in other areas of research. Thus, the number of examples of type 1 is twice that of type 2.

The accidental discovery of type 1 was detected due to abnormalities or malfunctions during the experiment and includes several reasons for the discovery as follows: a substance that was spilled and scattered (7, 9), a thermometer that broke and the mercury participated in the reaction (16, 17), a damaged or unclean vessel (3,2, 4), deviation from the planned course of the experiment and receiving unexpected material (1, 5, 6, 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24). A total of 22 examples. The accidental discovery in type 1 is material. The second group of examples belongs to type 2 where the accidental discovery was detected without exception under experimental conditions and without failures. The accidental discovery was identified following a diagnosis of phenomenon Exception. Below: (11, 12, 25, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33) a total of 12 examples.

There is a difference between the two types of experiment or observation regarding the products developed from the accidental discovery and their uses. In type 1, mostly in the field of chemistry, the products are mainly materials, such as polymers, dyes, pigments, photographic materials and chemical elements.

On the other hand, in type 2, which refers to the diagnosis of blind chance discovery in the framework of a proper experiment, the developments and findings are mainly phenomena in the field of physics and astronomy. The findings include different types of radiation, heavenly bodies, and physical phenomena related to electric voltage, temperature, magnetism, conductivity, and more.    

In most of the examples there is a connection between the researcher's field of activity and the type of accidental discovery. However, the accidental discovery is the property of individuals or a limited team of people engaged in research and development. This is because scientists routinely follow orderly protocols of a scientific experiment or scientific observation. As a result, an unusual accidental discovery during the planned experiment may be considered an unsuccessful finding (for example, the accidental discovery of penicillin) that should be ignored. In order not to ignore an accidental discovery, the same wisdom (sagacity) that Walpole listed without explaining is needed and it includes sharp and deep perception and logical judgment with the help of the prepared mind (according to Louis Pasteur). This reason has the power to prevent accidental discoveries from being ignored.

Table 1. Accidental discoveries in science

for further reading

Kantorovich, A. 2001. Blind creativity. "Galileo" 46, January-February.   

Austin, JH 1977. Chase, Chance & Creativity. The lucky art of novelty. Columbia University Press. New York.

Kantorovich, A. and Ne'eman, Y. Serendipity as a Source of Evolutionary Progress in Science. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 20:505-29.  

Roberts, RM 1989. Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York.

Dr. Amos Navon is an emeritus senior entomologist at the Agricultural Research Administration in the field of biological control of agricultural pests. Investigates physiological and biochemical means of development that have been affected by serendipitous processes. The article was first published in the Galileo journal.

More of the topic in Hayadan:

• History of science - world fame to Robert Scott / Edward G. Larson
• Edward Jenner and the cowpox - third part of the series about the smallpox
• Louis Pasteur - the man and the legend of spontaneous formation Part IV and last
• Serendipitous discoveries in science
• About scientists who searched Athens and found a kingdom