Accidental discoveries in science

What do penicillin, Teflon, Valium and birth control pills have in common? They are all products of scientific discoveries that happened by chance

The British writer and politician Horace Walpole (Walpole) wrote in 1754 to his old friend who lived in Italy, Sir Horace Mann (Mann), about a story he came across and called "The Three Princes of Serendip" (a story of the type of "One Thousand and One Nights"), in which the princes discovered on their travels " Discoveries they were not looking for and they discovered them thanks to accidents and sagacity."

Walpole defines the nature of the discovery as serendipity (derived from the name Serendip - the ancient Hindu name for the country of Sri Lanka). The Sagasian wisdom mentioned in the story is gifted with quick perception, controlled assessment of a situation, sharp judgment and mental openness.

Walpole did not delve into the meaning of serendipity beyond its definition and enjoyed the entertaining stories of discoveries. The definition of serendipity was documented in the publication of the correspondence between Walpole and Mann. They and others did not associate the phenomenon with science and technology, because the development of technology in their time was limited and the scope of scientific discoveries was low. That is why the concept of serendipity remained for many years in literary use only, and only in 1930 did it move from the world of literature to the world of science.

Serendipity was not mentioned in the important dictionaries until 1950, and only at the end of the 20th century were several books written about it. In 1989, serendipity was analyzed in detail as a source of evolutionary processes in science by the two Israeli scientists Aharon Kantorovich and Yuval Naman. Kantorovich also elaborated on the parallel between the serendipitous discovery of serendipity and neo-Drewinian evolutionary blindness. In this article we will discuss the types of accidental discovery as well as the ways and circumstances in which scientific discoveries of this type were discovered, identified and implemented.

Serendipitous discovery or serendipitous discoveryAccidental discovery can be divided into two types: 1: Accidental discovery that is not related to the original search topic (search for A and discover B). In this case, a problem is solved that the owner of the accidental discovery had no intention of solving or finding in the first place. In a biblical borrowing, this type would fit the description of Saul who "went to look for Athens and found a kingdom". 2: An accidental discovery that occurred during the original search. It is often an effect of the experiment as part of the research intention or the research goal that was defined from the beginning.

Therefore, we will call the discovery of type 1 as "serendipity discovery" (GAMS) and the discovery of type 2 will be called "accidental discovery without serendipity" (also-NS). Roberts proposed to call a type 2 discovery "simulated serendipity", but this concept is not sufficiently understood. Serendipity present or absent seems more appropriate to define the discovery types.

The role of sagacious wisdom in accidental discovery
Whether it is of the serendipitous type or not, it is a discovery that happens, by definition, unexpectedly. Therefore, the researcher must identify the discovery through thinking that is included under the concept of "sagastic wisdom" which Horace Walpole mentions in his letter. What are the characteristics of sagacious wisdom and how does it contribute to the identification of accidental discovery?

Quick perception, controlled situational assessment and sharp judgementThese skills are relevant not only to the scientist but also to those without a scientific background, provided that we are endowed with the abilities to locate and identify the accidental discovery.

A first example is the discovery of quinine. It begins with an ancient and undocumented story in which an Indian from the Andes mountains, who was ill with malaria, drank from a puddle that contained bitter water that reminded him of the taste of the bark of the cinchona tree. He recovered and connected the drinking of the water with his healing. The man told this to his relatives who were ill with malaria, they drank from the water and also recovered. Apparently this Indian myth was brought to the attention of the Spanish missionaries, who understood the importance of the discovery and supplied the bark of the cinchona tree to Europe. The active substance in the bark has been identified as quinine, which has long been used as an effective anti-malarial drug.

The second example is phototherapy as a treatment for neonatal jaundice. A hospital nurse in England discovered by chance that newborn 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 turned the bilirubin (which accumulates in jaundice) into a substance that is efficiently excreted from the body.

The third example is the development of the smallpox vaccine, which is attributed to the discovery of Edward Jenner, who worked as a country doctor in England at the end of the 18th century. One of the village women, a cow milker who worked there during the plague, reported to him that she had contracted smallpox. Cows (AP) and was not infected with smallpox despite the plague. Jenner linked the cause of AP disease with the possibility of vaccinating AD patients with it.

He took material from the smallpox of the worker infected with cowpox and infected several children with it. They fell ill, and after they recovered he infected them with smallpox. The disease did not break out in these children, and the side effects were mild. Jenner proved that the children were vaccinated using the causative agent of the AP disease, that is, it was a cross-vaccination. Another 44 years passed until the opposition to the use of Jenner's compound as a mandatory vaccine in the world was lifted. Thanks to the vaccine, medicine overcame the smallpox disease that killed hundreds of millions of people over time.

The contribution of the "prepared soul" to sagacious wisdomIn 1854, Louis Pasteur referred to the accidental discovery by saying: in the field of observations, chance only supports the "prepared mind" - "les esprits prépared". The mind in which previous knowledge and experience are stored, especially in the field in which the researcher deals, and sagacious wisdom is aided by this form of thought to identify the accidental discovery (the phrase "prepared mind" that appears in the literature is derived from the English translation "prepared mind").

Pasteur based his statement on his "prepared mind"; He knew about Jenner's work on the smallpox vaccine (cross-vaccination) even before he decided to create a vaccine against the fowl cholera disease. Unlike Jenner, he had already identified the cholera bacteria as the cause of the disease. His assistant accidentally injected the birds with cholera bacteria from an old culture in which they had lost their virulence. Unexpectedly, these birds did not die after being injected with virulent cholera bacteria.

In contrast, the birds that had not previously received bacteria from the old culture died when they were injected with virulent bacteria. In this experiment, Pasteur discovered and identified the principle of direct vaccination using weakened bacteria with the help of the "prepared mind" - the same clarity of thought that was prepared, as mentioned, by the work of Jenner and other researchers regarding the principle of vaccine development.

The following example refers to Fleming and the discovery of penicillin. Years earlier, Fleming had prepared a culture in a Petri dish from liquid secretions from his nose. When he examined the plate, a tear fell from his eye. The next day he noticed that where the tear landed, a surface free of bacteria was formed. His conclusion was that the tear contained an enzyme that caused the culture to break down (the enzyme is lysozyme).

The utility value of this discovery was marginal, but it seared Fleming's mind and prepared him for another similar discovery. In 1928, Fleming studied the flu. In one of the petri dishes, a mycelium of fungus developed and around it a surface free of bacteria. Fleming recalled the previous discovery of lysozymes, and concluded that the substance secreted by the fungus killed the staphylococcus bacteria that had grown on the plate. This fungus was defined as Penicillium notatum, and the antibiotic substance was called penicillin.

If it were not for the participation of the "prepared mind" in the discovery, the petri dish would have found its way to the trash bin thinking that the mushroom spores had "spoiled" the experiment. Is Pasteur's statement true about any accidental discovery? Physicist Joseph Henry preceded Pasteur when he said: "The seeds of great discoveries are constantly floating around us, but they only take root if our souls are ready to receive them." It seems that the sayings are not appropriate in the case that the soul is not ready to absorb and recognize the revelation: a situation that requires the exercise of sagacious wisdom that is out of the ordinary.

Lack of mental fixation

Sometimes the GMS discoverer is not able to exhaust the full useful potential of the accidental discovery, such as Fleming, who did not recognize the purpose of penicillin as a medicine that works inside the body. On the other hand, the pathologist Howard Florey (Florey and the chemist Ernest Chain) and their staff in Oxford developed Fleming's penicillin into a drug that works inside the body. Why didn't Fleming himself promote the development made by Florey Chain? (All three jointly won in 1945 the prize Nobel for the development of penicillin).

Fleming, the microbiologist, apparently lacked the necessary expertise to develop penicillin into a drug that works inside the body. However, for various reasons, Fleming did not support the promotion of penicillin beyond the use of the mushroom extract to cure skin infections. In fact, Fleming lacked the openness to correctly assess the varied use of penicillin, an attitude that probably also prevailed in his scientific environment, and he did not believe that penicillin could be used as an effective medicine against infectious diseases inside the body, but only as a vaccine. About this approach, Ernest Chain said that it is "a good example of how preconceived and fixed opinions in science can stifle the imagination and delay progress." This is, therefore, a clear example of the role of the prepared mind in accidental discovery.

In the end, the development of both types of accidental discovery is conditional on useful products in economic infrastructure and personalization. Therefore, many years pass before the product becomes usable. On the other hand, the chance of finding a GMS or even a NS increases with appropriate scientific conduct, as Carl Ziegler (Ziegler), who discovered by chance in 1953 a method for producing polyethylene: "Keep an eye on unexpected developments in experiment or observation and do not neglect them either If they are not relevant to the subject of the original research". And what about the correct identification of the discovery? This will be helped by sagacious wisdom, with the support of the "prepared mind".