FABULOUS SCIENCE

The history of science, certainly as taught at school and undergraduate level, is usually seen as a clear upward curve of progress. Key points on this curve are the heroic great names who proclaimed the next leap upwards. To begin with they were usually scorned by the academic establishment, but after a period of often bitter controversy, their insights were accepted and they joined the pantheon of scientists of world renown. As in many a scientific experiment, this historical curve is a 'best fit' artefact imposed to make sense of a scatter of results most of which do not fit onto the curve at all. Waller's argument is that the process of scientific discovery is a far messier and more uncertain business than the picture given by a retrospective hero centred history. Since he accuses some great figures of being economical with the truth, he is scrupulously honest about the fact that this is a picture drawn from secondary sources. Eddington's measurements of the gravitational deviation of light taken at the solar eclipse of 1919 converted Einstein's Theory of Relativity from an interesting speculation to a basic law of physics. Millikan's determination of the charge of the electron is the basic foundation upon which all subsequent sub-atomic physics and quantum theory is based. Pasteur's proof that germs are not spontaneously generated is the basis of all modern medical treatment of infectious disease. . Yet Eddington's and Millikan's experimental results were faulty and ambiguous. Eddington simply disregarded all the observations that did not fit his preconceived notion that Einstein was right. Millikan's first set of results did not show what he wanted. The next set was carefully edited so that they did. Pasteur refused to carry out an experiment which would have apparently refuted his germ theory of disease given the state of knowledge at the time. Waller's point is not that Pasteur, Eddington and Millikan were wrong. They thought they were right, and the subsequent history of science showed that they were right. The point is that science is not as Francis Bacon thought it, a process of induction where the accumulation of evidence finally produces a new theory. It is not as Popper asserted, a process of trying to falsify an existing theory. Science is very often a deductive process whereby scientists think of the answer first and look for the evidence afterwards. Also the great names in the history of science did not always see their work in the same perspective as it looks now in the retrospect of history. Mendelian genetics goes far beyond anything the obscure monk Gregor Mendel could have imagined from his work on garden peas. Darwin was not a didactic Darwinian. Because of Kelvin's gross underestimate of the age of the Earth, there did not seem time for natural selection to take place. So later in his life Darwin admitted that some internal proto-Lamarckian mechanism might enable an organism to direct its evolution from within. A 4.5 billion year old Earth and the discovery of genetic mutation has made natural selection today the sole orthodox mechanism of evolution, though there are those who still think that the later Darwin might be right. Again great advances in science rarely spring new born from the mind of just one person. They are often 'in the air' , and the person who crystallises it out into a clear and attractive form is the one credited with the discovery. The evolution of life from simpler beginnings was a commonplace of speculation before Darwin provided a clear mechanism and an accumulation of evidence. Lister did not discover antiseptic surgery, he just applied the particular technique of using a carbolic acid spray on wounds, and was indifferent to the surrounding dirt in the wards. Simpson did not discover anaesthesia, but giving Queen Victoria chloroform during childbirth made him a medical hero. Scientific discoveries are often the product of teams working together. Indeed today the isolated genius working alone is the very rare exception. Yet the need to have hero figures, or award Nobel prizes, often results in one or two being singled out, where the credit should be distributed more widely. Scientists are human, and even great ones can be unwilling to give others their due. Darwin's acknowledgement of Wallace as the co-author of the idea of Natural Selection is the exception rather than the rule. Fleming never properly recognises that the credit for the use of penicillin as an anti-biotic belonged to Florey not himself. Charles Best re-wrote the history of the discovery of insulin to give himself far more credit than he deserved. No really deep scandals are revealed by this book, and there is no sense that the picture of the upward progress of science has to be revised. All the same readers may be inclined to read all future histories of scientific discovery with a pinch of salt at the ready.