European Molecular Biology Organization
Volume 9 Number 5 2008
by Howard Wolinsky
excerpts:
"The super-detective Sherlock Holmes, invented by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), famously held that, "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
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One might assume that this purely logical principle applies
equally well to new scientific ideas, given that scientists, like
Holmes, seek to uncover the truth. Ideally, a new hypothesis that helps
to explain previously unexplainable observations should therefore
replace previous theories.
Unfortunately, scientists do not always follow a path of pure logic, as the German physicist Max Planck (1858–1947) once observed, "[a] new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
The
history of science is replete with theories that only became accepted
by the scientific community after a long and protracted uphill battle. Stanley Prusiner met a similar fate when he proposed that
proteins could be infectious agents; his prion theory, which won him
the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997, needed many years
before it was accepted.
It
is not only the hypotheses that shatter well-established knowledge and
theories that are ridiculed, dismissed or rejected. Even a simple
insight—for example, that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori,
rather than physiological problems, causes stomach ulcers—is not always
quickly accepted. Australian physician Barry Marshall won some of the
most prestigious scientific prizes, including the Robert Koch and the
Lasker Prizes, before the clinical community grudgingly accepted that
he was right. For his insight, Marshall was eventually awarded the
Nobel Prize together with Robin Warren in 2005.
It is not only the
reluctance of established research fields and communities that slow
down the uptake of revolutionary hypotheses, but also a general
reluctance to explore new ideas and support those who do so.
Read the entire article at European Molecular Biology Organization
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