7 ms·

Texas cancer researcher was called ‘foolish’, then won the Nobel Prize (2018)

160 points by new_guy 8y ago

Grustaf 8y ago
I wonder if there are Nobel prize winners that were never called foolish.
- interestica 8y ago
  Yeah that's why I hate headlines like this. It's so easy for modern writers to find that validating tweet or comment to present the narrative that supports their article. Was 'foolish' a consensus? I'm willing to bet that an equally factual headline would be "Researcher called 'genius' then won Nobel Prize"
- chubot 8y ago
  It reminds me of the "sounds like a bad idea" / "is a good idea" Venn diagram for startups. If it sounded like a good idea and was a good idea, then a bunch of people would have already tried it. There would be steady progress by many people, and steady competition. There would be no "breakthrough" by a single person / company. If it sounded like a bad idea and was a bad idea, then either nobody tried it, or a contrarian tried it and quietly failed.
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  At least there are a lot of fools who never won a Nobel prize.
new_guy 8y ago
Full Title: A Texas scientist was called ‘foolish’ for arguing the immune system could fight cancer. Then he won the Nobel Prize. It got a little mangled with the length constraint.
- jhbadger 8y ago
  And in-between the critiques of his idea and the prize winning, Allison actually showed evidence that checkpoint blockade worked. That's what kind of annoys me about stories that describe science in these terms. It's as if the authors want the reader to take away the moral "Don't criticize scientists with seemingly crazy ideas; they might be right!". But criticizing crazy ideas up until the point where they are shown not to be crazy is exactly how science works.
  - doitLP 8y ago
    True, but it is also important to be aware of the hand-wavy hubris/entrenched viewpoints that might prevent those ideas from having the chance to prove themselves right. “Science proceeds one funeral at a time”
    - chrisbrandow 8y ago
      It’s a fundamental tension in the scientific method. We create models for how reality works. We _know_ that they are imperfect and incomplete, but at times we forget and therefore treat an idea or even observation that violates the model as “impossible”. Multiple observations ultimately dispel this failure but single observations are easy to dismiss. This is also why crazy but ultimately correct ideas are difficult to distinguish from crazy and wrong ideas. And academics spend a lot of time teaching people to understand the models, and are always looking for errors that arise from an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the models. So, it is very natural to treat new theories that violate an incomplete model the same way. Especially in fields like medicine where it is nearly impossible to truly isolate single factors and outcomes.
  - trickstra 8y ago
    True, though there is a difference between criticizing by saying "you have a logical mistake here and wrong data here", and saying "you are a fool, this will never work". Even to a crazy idea.
    - 8y ago
ramraj07 8y ago
As some context, in 2001, a couple of scientists many might consider to be the closest to the "leaders of cancer research" wrote a seminal review in the journal Cell called as "hallmarks of cancer" where they set out to define 7 essential (or what they thought was essential) things that a tumor has to do to be defined as cancerous. That list did not include any mention whatsoever of the immune system. IIRC the only mention of the immune system was in one sentence deep in the review where they just casually disregard it. I was still in high school when this review came out so I probably can't say I would have thought differently but at least to me that review was indicative of the fairly myopic way research happens in general, even today. Imagine this - two of the leaders of the field who are supposed to fill out ten pages of all the things that could affect or be affected by a developing cancer, and it did not fathom to the that the immune system had something to do with it? The more outrageous thing is its not unheard of that the immune system has a role to play. People had suspected a long time that even chemo therapy in general only works via the immune response. It's the level of insulation between immunologists and cancer biologists that was to blame. People just decided to stick to one gene or disease and really didn't want to give a shit about anything else happening in biology with serious thought. No wonder it has taken us so long! And if you think Im being too harsh, a decade later in 2011 the same authors wrote an amended review to update their original. By now it had become obvious that the immune system presented both a formidable barrier at first and an essential ally in later steps for any cancer to be able to grow and thrive. Don't know about you, but that sounds like an essential "Hallmark" of cancer to me. But then of course lest we correct ourselves, the researchers just grouped the immune checkpoint as one of the several other "supplemental" hallmarks that were discovered since.
- Retric 8y ago
  Being factually incorrect does not mean they made a mistake. The correct response to every science idea is extreme skepticism without evidence. That’s not to say we should avoid gathering evidence, just that the default needs to be conservative.
  - ramraj07 8y ago
    The point though is that there _was_ evidence. They just didn't see it (at first) or chose to wittingly or unwittingly undermine it (a decade later). Skepticism of results is one thing, but wilful pursuance of the "only way to approach things is the way I know of, every other way has to be proven beyond any other metric I would need for my own way to be considered" is another.
negamax 8y ago
Tyranny of success..
ilrwbwrkhv 8y ago
https://outline.com/D2GuNJ https://outline.com/D2GuNJ
ngcc_hk 8y ago
Nothing new. Read the about paradigm shift. You cannot work if you doubt every library you used may be hacked (or your assumption or idea is wrong about field X). Even if it is wrong obviously eg black body radiation you still continue. What one should know how it is not if but when the library was hacked (or your assumption is wrong), ...
sorenn111 8y ago
I think this lends credence to the Thiel/Eric Weinstein notion of allowing scientists and innovators to be irreverent because many new discoveries have to run against the grain. I've heard Weinstein postulate one of the great strengths of Western education is the fostering of such irreverence.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- RandomTisk 8y ago
  I've heard physicist Michio Kaku say something similar, that western thought historically has rewarded the mavericks but that eastern thought has tended towards a "the tallest blade of grass is cut down first" mentality. I think it was him who said that had Bill Gates been born in China, his peers would have made his success very unlikely.
  - papermill 8y ago
    This is simply historically false. From Galileo and copernicus to even the scientists positing germ theory in the 1800s, mavericks who fought against orthodoxy have been persecuted. Even today, in our colleges, "mavericks" are punished and attacked. Our most famous maverick, Socrates, was forced to commit suicide. It's true bill gates wouldn't have amounted to much had he been born in 1950s china because china was heavily undeveloped. But had he been born later in the 60s or 70s with china opening up, he could have been a Jack Ma.
gojomo 8y ago
In the very early 80s, as a middle-school student in the suburbs of Houston with a new Apple ][+, I attended a personal computing show downtown. One of the booths was showing off a game, called "Killer T-Cell" if I remember correctly, based on some local university research. You'd move a little T-Cell around, through a changing pink maze of good tissue, to absorb & destroy any cancerous (purple?) cells that popped up. It used hi-res mode but seemed to be played on a grid based on the Apple ][+'s low-res mode – and sometimes that mode flashed through as well. (I can't remember if that was a glitch or purposeful effect.) It was pretty crude in graphics and gameplay, but we bought it, for maybe $5 or $10, on a 5.25" floppy – moreso for the novelty and intellectual content than anything else. Over 37 years ago, that game conveyed to me the idea that people probably get a lot of microcancers all the time, which are routinely cleaned up by the immune system's T-cells, and only become a problem when the immune system is finally overwhelmed or tricked. Dr. Allison's Wikipedia page suggests he was at Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center at that time, in his early 30s. I wonder if the game was motivated by his research... or even if he was the person who sold me that game.
- antoncohen 8y ago
  The professor that created "Killer T-Cell" was Dr. Elton Stubblefield[1][2]. Both Dr. Elton Stubblefield and Dr. James Allison were at University of Texas MD Anderson Center in Houston. [1] https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/10/28/Beating-cancer-the-video-way/9982404625600/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/10/28/Beating-cancer-the-v... [2] http://jplaffont.photoshelter.com/image/I0000BBbrdiNVlfI http://jplaffont.photoshelter.com/image/I0000BBbrdiNVlfI
  - gojomo 8y ago
    Thank you! My searches had turned up nothing. (Was something like Lexis-Nexus needed to find that old UPI story?)
- _red 8y ago
  I'm not a scientist, medical researcher, nor even very knowledgeable about biology. However, as part of my work, we deal with some prominent medical research institutions. Over visits and dinners I've got to talk with a few of their leading anti-cancer researchers. One thing that was explained to me was a researcher saying that current findings are pointing out that cancer would be better thought of as a "immune deficiency" disease, rather than anything else. For something to be "cancerous", must meet two basic conditions: (a) It short circuits the genes in the cell which limit reproduction, cancers instead reprogram to reproduce continuously. (b) Are in stealth-mode to the bodies immune system. Evidently, your body can detect "A" and self-contain those micro-tumors basically in cysts as it was explained. However when "A" and "B" combine, your body can't deal with it because it can't even see it. This particular professors research involved genetically altering cancer cells so that they could again be visible to the bodies immune system and marked as "defective". Thus, the body could rid itself of the cancer naturally.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jameszol 8y ago
This reminds me of a book called The Power of Starting Something Stupid, by Richie Norton. The book tells several stories just like this one, where it seems like peers or others are criticizing your work as “stupid” but you get it done anyways because you know it is worthwhile, then finally the world rewards you handsomely for it.
squirrelicus 8y ago
Relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/26/rule-genius-in-not-out/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/26/rule-genius-in-not-out... tl;dr The kinds of ideas that people who innovate come up with are found at the extremes of convention, and are not distinguishable from crazy whether they are right or wrong, and You should expect an innovator to produce dumb ideas all the time. In other words, forgive the smart, for they know not when they dumb. Edit: this is also why we can be justified praising Elon Musk for SpaceX and, to a lesser extent Tesla, and also ignore complete and utter nonsense like Hyperloop and his cave submarine.
mrosett 8y ago
This stuff matters. I was fortunate enough to join a [trial](https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00636168 https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00636168) for Yervoy the summer before it was approved by the FDA. Based on my reading of the outcomes, there's a 1-in-4 chance that I'd be dead if I hadn't gotten the drug through that trial. (It was initially double-blind but has since been unblinded, so I know I was dosed with it.)

160 points by new_guy 8y ago

Grustaf 8y ago

I wonder if there are Nobel prize winners that were never called foolish.

interestica 8y ago
Yeah that's why I hate headlines like this. It's so easy for modern writers to find that validating tweet or comment to present the narrative that supports their article. Was 'foolish' a consensus? I'm willing to bet that an equally factual headline would be "Researcher called 'genius' then won Nobel Prize"
chubot 8y ago
It reminds me of the "sounds like a bad idea" / "is a good idea" Venn diagram for startups. If it sounded like a good idea and was a good idea, then a bunch of people would have already tried it. There would be steady progress by many people, and steady competition. There would be no "breakthrough" by a single person / company. If it sounded like a bad idea and was a bad idea, then either nobody tried it, or a contrarian tried it and quietly failed.
BurningFrog 8y ago
At least there are a lot of fools who never won a Nobel prize.

new_guy 8y ago

Full Title: A Texas scientist was called ‘foolish’ for arguing the immune system could fight cancer. Then he won the Nobel Prize. It got a little mangled with the length constraint.

jhbadger 8y ago
And in-between the critiques of his idea and the prize winning, Allison actually showed evidence that checkpoint blockade worked. That's what kind of annoys me about stories that describe science in these terms. It's as if the authors want the reader to take away the moral "Don't criticize scientists with seemingly crazy ideas; they might be right!". But criticizing crazy ideas up until the point where they are shown not to be crazy is exactly how science works.
- doitLP 8y ago
  True, but it is also important to be aware of the hand-wavy hubris/entrenched viewpoints that might prevent those ideas from having the chance to prove themselves right. “Science proceeds one funeral at a time”
  - chrisbrandow 8y ago
    It’s a fundamental tension in the scientific method. We create models for how reality works. We _know_ that they are imperfect and incomplete, but at times we forget and therefore treat an idea or even observation that violates the model as “impossible”. Multiple observations ultimately dispel this failure but single observations are easy to dismiss. This is also why crazy but ultimately correct ideas are difficult to distinguish from crazy and wrong ideas. And academics spend a lot of time teaching people to understand the models, and are always looking for errors that arise from an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the models. So, it is very natural to treat new theories that violate an incomplete model the same way. Especially in fields like medicine where it is nearly impossible to truly isolate single factors and outcomes.
- trickstra 8y ago
  True, though there is a difference between criticizing by saying "you have a logical mistake here and wrong data here", and saying "you are a fool, this will never work". Even to a crazy idea.
  - 8y ago

ramraj07 8y ago

As some context, in 2001, a couple of scientists many might consider to be the closest to the "leaders of cancer research" wrote a seminal review in the journal Cell called as "hallmarks of cancer" where they set out to define 7 essential (or what they thought was essential) things that a tumor has to do to be defined as cancerous. That list did not include any mention whatsoever of the immune system. IIRC the only mention of the immune system was in one sentence deep in the review where they just casually disregard it. I was still in high school when this review came out so I probably can't say I would have thought differently but at least to me that review was indicative of the fairly myopic way research happens in general, even today. Imagine this - two of the leaders of the field who are supposed to fill out ten pages of all the things that could affect or be affected by a developing cancer, and it did not fathom to the that the immune system had something to do with it? The more outrageous thing is its not unheard of that the immune system has a role to play. People had suspected a long time that even chemo therapy in general only works via the immune response. It's the level of insulation between immunologists and cancer biologists that was to blame. People just decided to stick to one gene or disease and really didn't want to give a shit about anything else happening in biology with serious thought. No wonder it has taken us so long! And if you think Im being too harsh, a decade later in 2011 the same authors wrote an amended review to update their original. By now it had become obvious that the immune system presented both a formidable barrier at first and an essential ally in later steps for any cancer to be able to grow and thrive. Don't know about you, but that sounds like an essential "Hallmark" of cancer to me. But then of course lest we correct ourselves, the researchers just grouped the immune checkpoint as one of the several other "supplemental" hallmarks that were discovered since.

Retric 8y ago
Being factually incorrect does not mean they made a mistake. The correct response to every science idea is extreme skepticism without evidence. That’s not to say we should avoid gathering evidence, just that the default needs to be conservative.
- ramraj07 8y ago
  The point though is that there _was_ evidence. They just didn't see it (at first) or chose to wittingly or unwittingly undermine it (a decade later). Skepticism of results is one thing, but wilful pursuance of the "only way to approach things is the way I know of, every other way has to be proven beyond any other metric I would need for my own way to be considered" is another.

negamax 8y ago

Tyranny of success..

ilrwbwrkhv 8y ago

https://outline.com/D2GuNJ https://outline.com/D2GuNJ

ngcc_hk 8y ago

Nothing new. Read the about paradigm shift. You cannot work if you doubt every library you used may be hacked (or your assumption or idea is wrong about field X). Even if it is wrong obviously eg black body radiation you still continue. What one should know how it is not if but when the library was hacked (or your assumption is wrong), ...

sorenn111 8y ago

I think this lends credence to the Thiel/Eric Weinstein notion of allowing scientists and innovators to be irreverent because many new discoveries have to run against the grain. I've heard Weinstein postulate one of the great strengths of Western education is the fostering of such irreverence.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
RandomTisk 8y ago
I've heard physicist Michio Kaku say something similar, that western thought historically has rewarded the mavericks but that eastern thought has tended towards a "the tallest blade of grass is cut down first" mentality. I think it was him who said that had Bill Gates been born in China, his peers would have made his success very unlikely.
- papermill 8y ago
  This is simply historically false. From Galileo and copernicus to even the scientists positing germ theory in the 1800s, mavericks who fought against orthodoxy have been persecuted. Even today, in our colleges, "mavericks" are punished and attacked. Our most famous maverick, Socrates, was forced to commit suicide. It's true bill gates wouldn't have amounted to much had he been born in 1950s china because china was heavily undeveloped. But had he been born later in the 60s or 70s with china opening up, he could have been a Jack Ma.

gojomo 8y ago

In the very early 80s, as a middle-school student in the suburbs of Houston with a new Apple ][+, I attended a personal computing show downtown. One of the booths was showing off a game, called "Killer T-Cell" if I remember correctly, based on some local university research. You'd move a little T-Cell around, through a changing pink maze of good tissue, to absorb & destroy any cancerous (purple?) cells that popped up. It used hi-res mode but seemed to be played on a grid based on the Apple ][+'s low-res mode – and sometimes that mode flashed through as well. (I can't remember if that was a glitch or purposeful effect.) It was pretty crude in graphics and gameplay, but we bought it, for maybe $5 or $10, on a 5.25" floppy – moreso for the novelty and intellectual content than anything else. Over 37 years ago, that game conveyed to me the idea that people probably get a lot of microcancers all the time, which are routinely cleaned up by the immune system's T-cells, and only become a problem when the immune system is finally overwhelmed or tricked. Dr. Allison's Wikipedia page suggests he was at Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center at that time, in his early 30s. I wonder if the game was motivated by his research... or even if he was the person who sold me that game.

antoncohen 8y ago
The professor that created "Killer T-Cell" was Dr. Elton Stubblefield[1][2]. Both Dr. Elton Stubblefield and Dr. James Allison were at University of Texas MD Anderson Center in Houston. [1] https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/10/28/Beating-cancer-the-video-way/9982404625600/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/10/28/Beating-cancer-the-v... [2] http://jplaffont.photoshelter.com/image/I0000BBbrdiNVlfI http://jplaffont.photoshelter.com/image/I0000BBbrdiNVlfI
- gojomo 8y ago
  Thank you! My searches had turned up nothing. (Was something like Lexis-Nexus needed to find that old UPI story?)
_red 8y ago
I'm not a scientist, medical researcher, nor even very knowledgeable about biology. However, as part of my work, we deal with some prominent medical research institutions. Over visits and dinners I've got to talk with a few of their leading anti-cancer researchers. One thing that was explained to me was a researcher saying that current findings are pointing out that cancer would be better thought of as a "immune deficiency" disease, rather than anything else. For something to be "cancerous", must meet two basic conditions: (a) It short circuits the genes in the cell which limit reproduction, cancers instead reprogram to reproduce continuously. (b) Are in stealth-mode to the bodies immune system. Evidently, your body can detect "A" and self-contain those micro-tumors basically in cysts as it was explained. However when "A" and "B" combine, your body can't deal with it because it can't even see it. This particular professors research involved genetically altering cancer cells so that they could again be visible to the bodies immune system and marked as "defective". Thus, the body could rid itself of the cancer naturally.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jameszol 8y ago

This reminds me of a book called The Power of Starting Something Stupid, by Richie Norton. The book tells several stories just like this one, where it seems like peers or others are criticizing your work as “stupid” but you get it done anyways because you know it is worthwhile, then finally the world rewards you handsomely for it.

squirrelicus 8y ago

Relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/26/rule-genius-in-not-out/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/26/rule-genius-in-not-out... tl;dr The kinds of ideas that people who innovate come up with are found at the extremes of convention, and are not distinguishable from crazy whether they are right or wrong, and You should expect an innovator to produce dumb ideas all the time. In other words, forgive the smart, for they know not when they dumb. Edit: this is also why we can be justified praising Elon Musk for SpaceX and, to a lesser extent Tesla, and also ignore complete and utter nonsense like Hyperloop and his cave submarine.

mrosett 8y ago

This stuff matters. I was fortunate enough to join a [trial](https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00636168 https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00636168) for Yervoy the summer before it was approved by the FDA. Based on my reading of the outcomes, there's a 1-in-4 chance that I'd be dead if I hadn't gotten the drug through that trial. (It was initially double-blind but has since been unblinded, so I know I was dosed with it.)