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Nobel Prize speech from the inventor of PCR, Kary Mullis (1993)
- morley 6y agoI like his observation about unsupervised tinkering with dangerous chemicals as a childhood gateway into the sciences, but I don't know what to do with it. How do you _effectively_ convince your community that the gain in scientific curiosity is worth the small potential for disaster?
- diego_moita 6y agoWhat do you make from someone like Kary Mullis? On one hand he did create one of the most revolutionary technologies of the 20th century, the PCR. OTOH he was a denier of the HIV virus role as a cause of Aids and actively supported South Africa's president Tabo Mbeki on a disastrous policy of ignoring the transmission of the disease. I take that everyone's opinions must always be taken cautiously, even the opinion of smart men in their own areas of expertise.
- hprotagonist 6y agoIf nothing else you have to muse on the separability of man and idea, at least a little. PCR is an amazing idea. It’s inventor was a deeply weird guy with a large pile of really bad ideas and an even larger pile of not-even-false ones (e.g., the raccoon spirit animal thing). Like Pauling, or Watson, a lesson to learn here is that just because someone got a Nobel for true and legit reasons doesn’t mean that what they have to say about other things is of the same caliber. Or even in the same neighborhood of that caliber. Or that a Nobel is a mark of moral character, or anything of that sort.
- ignoramous 6y ago> Or that a Nobel is a mark of moral character, or anything of that sort. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Court#Post_tennis_career_and_religious_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Court#Post_tennis_car...
- 1cvmask 6y agoObama was the biggest killer of millions of non-whites in the 21st century with his bombings, drone strikes, regime changes, attempted coups etc... The white Nobel committee considers this a worthy endeavor. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2009/press-release/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2009/press-release/
- Tarsul 6y agoHe got the nobel price in 2009, the year he was sworn in. He couldn't have been yet the "killer" you describe.
- samatman 6y agoYeah he did... maybe they shouldn't have done that.
- freshpots 6y agoDid you get cast out from Reddit? This is not your place either then.
- oblio 6y agoThe 21st century is barely 20 years old. And we seem to have a contender for Obama's supposed results, from the other world superpower. Also, are you counting Bush's invasion of Iraq as something Obama started? Where are you getting those numbers?
- crististm 6y agoFeynman was that kind of guy. He pointed out a mistake he made during the Challenger investigation that the media took as "must be true because a Nobel prize winner says so".
- dekhn 6y agoHe also would give scientific presentations, then slip in some completely unrelated slides of scantily clad women. I've never understood why old-school male scientists think that is appropriate.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoI've met many old-school male scientists, and none of them would have shown pages from the Pirelli calendar during a conference presentation.
- dekhn 6y agoI didn't mean to tar lots of old-school male scientists. I only meant that, during my long career, I've only seen old-school male scientists show this sort of stuff, or approve of it. But I didn't mean to imply that large numbers of them did it. However, it was generally tolerated and not spoken up against.
- api 6y agoWilliam Shockley, one of the primary inventors of the first practical transistor, was basically a Nazi, as was Henry Ford. Thomas Edison tried to build a radio to talk to ghosts. Nikola Tesla claimed his inventions were channeled in dreams. Jack Parsons, one of the key rocket scientists of the early space age and the primary inventor of modern solid fuel boosters, was a follower of Aliester Crowley who tried to invoke supernatural entities with sex magic while high on peyote. I know two biology Ph.D's who are Biblical-literalist 6000 year creationists, and one of the most brilliant artists and writers I've met thinks we faked the Moon landing. In the Silicon Valley orbit I've met many neo-reactionaries and neo-fascists and on the flip side people who are so "woke" they see every human interaction in terms of racial and cultural power dynamics. I've met yet more engineers who are into occultism, ghost hunting, and... I could do this for a long time. In my experience the more intelligent a person is the more likely they are to believe bizarre and extremely heterodox things. One of my issues with the modern skeptic movement has always been how they try to whitewash the history of science and engineering and forget about all the wild ass shit all these people believed (and that present-day scientists and engineers believe when you get a few beers into them).
- tinus_hn 6y agoIf some scientists behind the scenes are madmen, why is that an issue with skeptics who refuse to believe them at face value? I don’t get that leap.
- api 6y agoThat's not what I meant. I was talking about what I see as a whitewashing of history, an attempt to take the wild thrashing punk concert that is the actual history of human thought and render it down into soft rock for easy listening.
- hprotagonist 6y ago“kill your idols” is good advice against this trend you identify. we as a society do it to everyone; it’s a great way to neuter radicals, mostly to our disservice.
- sampo 6y ago> What do you make from someone like Kary Mullis? By academic credentials, Mullis was a 3rd rate scientist. Then he had that one brilliant invention. Then he went back to being almost a crackpot. For comparison, the inventor of the fundamentals of the now famous mRNA vaccine technology, Katalin Karikó, was 2nd rate scientist by academic credentials. Could not get tenured permanent position, but was able to stay employed in the normal workforce at a university. Of course, by scientific importance they are both first rate scientists, because of their important inventions.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoI recall a quote by an introspective and humble Nobel winner (I think it was one of the guys who discovered/verified the cosmic microwave background radiation) that was basically "They don't give Nobels for being the best scientist, they give it for the most important discoveries." He was basically saying he happened to be at the right place at the right time (working on a team that had access to the proper telescopes), and that he was no Einstein. The fact that Mullis made a huge discovery and is also a third rate scientist and crackpot are not mutually exclusive.
- type0 6y agoIf he was a third rate chemists there's no way he would invent PCR, even if it seems obvious after the fact and with current automation. He wasn't just at the right place at the right time; unless you want to credit it to aliens that he claims to have met.
- dekhn 6y agoamusingly, Mullis got high on LSD while at Berkeley, went to Golden Gate Park, and wrote a paper about universal time reversal that got published (single author!) in Nature. Boy, publishing was a lot easier then.
- beefman 6y agoThat paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/218663b0 https://www.nature.com/articles/218663b0
- lisper 6y ago> he was a denier of the HIV virus role as a cause of Aids I did a deep dive into this back in the 90s, during the course of which I had a chance to talk to Kary. I looked up his phone number on the internet (this was long before doxxing was a thing), cold-called him, and he picked up the phone. We talked for about half an hour. That's the kind of guy he was. I more or less asked him how can a smart guy like you buy into this conspiracy theory? His answer was: he wasn't buying in to the conspiracy theory. He was not endorsing the idea that HIV did not cause AIDS. All he believed was that there was not yet enough data to conclusively show that HIV was the cause, and so people should keep an open mind. And frankly, given what was known at the time, I thought he had a valid point.
- jolux 6y agoHe remained a denialist for the rest of his life, though. And besides there was plenty of evidence in the early 90s that HIV caused AIDS. It was conclusive.
- lisper 6y ago> there was plenty of evidence in the early 90s that HIV caused AIDS. It was conclusive. That is far from clear, at least to me. The main thing that bothered me at the time, and which I've never seen satisfactorily explained, is that 1) AIDS was widely believed to be 100% fatal, 2) believed to be caused by HIV, but 3) the HIV virus had incubation periods of [EDIT: up to] ten years or more. I don't see any way to validly conclude that HIV causes AIDS at a time when the virus had only been known for ten years or so. One could advance this as a plausible hypothesis (one which ultimately proved to be correct), but in the mid-90s I think there was still room for valid doubt. But I'm very open to being convinced that I was wrong about this (not that it matters much at this point, but it is of historical interest to me).
- jolux 6y agoThat incubation period doesn't sound right. Google tells me: "The interval from HIV infection to the diagnosis of AIDS ranges from about 9 months to 20 years or longer, with a median of 12 years." (https://www2.health.vic.gov.au/public-health/infectious-diseases/disease-information-advice/hiv-and-aids https://www2.health.vic.gov.au/public-health/infectious-dise...) So yes, median of 12 years. Not minimum. Wikipedia's entry on HIV/AIDS denialism links to this document from a committee organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1988 where the committee says they find the evidence of a causal link between HIV and AIDS conclusive (page 33): https://www.nap.edu/read/771/chapter/4 https://www.nap.edu/read/771/chapter/4 The rest of that section explains the evidence they have: extremely high correlates for HIV infection and subsequent AIDS prevalence in at-risk communities, no cases in populations that were not at risk, near 100% detection rate of HIV in the blood of AIDS patients, and the tracing of HIV infected blood donors to transfusion patients acquiring AIDS.
- COGlory 6y agoScience, when done properly, is supposed to divorce itself from our biases. The whole point of the scientific method is that someone like Kary who is a bonafide crackpot, can still make one of the most influential valid scientific discoveries of all time. As a process in its truest form, it works. And we should all be very glad of that, and use it as a lesson to be aware of how biased we can be, and how a biased person can still wield the tools to arrive at the truth.
- hprotagonist 6y agoMax Gergel, mentioned in passing here, wrote a delightfully insane memoir entitled “Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like To Buy A Kilo Of Isopropyl Bromide?” full of some pretty hair-raising stories: http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/gergel_isopropyl_bromide.pdf http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/gergel_isopr...
- tpmx 6y agohttps://response.epa.gov/site/site_profile.aspx?site_id=2960 https://response.epa.gov/site/site_profile.aspx?site_id=2960 The area where the Columbia Organic Chemicals Company was located was restored in 2007-2008. "A total of 1,436.40 tons of soil was removed and disposed of." From the speech: > There were no government regulators to stifle our fledgling efforts, and it was a golden age, but we didn’t notice it.
- temptemptemp111 6y agoCelebrate what you like from him, and censor what highlights your personal delusions... Pathetic.
- alextheparrot 6y ago> Then I would add the dideoxynucleoside triphosphate mixtures, and another aliquot of polymerase Ever thankful for heat stable polymerases.
- dekhn 6y agowhen he started, he didn't have heat stable polymerases- that came later. Instead you had to add more pol each step, which was a huge pain.
- alextheparrot 6y agoI know, just glad I worked in a molecular biology lab after Taq was discovered. My lab experience was akin to his first hopes — put the reagents in, place it in the thermocycler, and pick it up the next morning.
- dekhn 6y agoyou probably worked in a lab during the period where scientists, annoyed that PCR machines required purchase of licensed Taq, simply cloned and expressed their own and used it instead.
- alextheparrot 6y agoIf only I were so lucky, might've made me more thoughtful when planning experiments
- rolph 6y agoso far no one has mentioned the LSD and others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis#Use_of_hallucinogens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis#Use_of_hallucinoge...
- trimbo 6y agoWhat an amazing speech blending personal and technical. I wish I could have heard him actually give this lecture (is there a video? I can't find it). And a great conclusion: > In Berkeley it drizzles in the winter. Avocados ripen at odd times and the tree in Fred’s front yard was wet and sagging from a load of fruit. I was sagging as I walked out to my little silver Honda Civic, which never failed to start. Neither Fred, empty Becks bottles, nor the sweet smell of the dawn of the age of PCR could replace Jenny. I was lonesome.
- runjake 6y agoThere are audio versions of his speech on YouTube. I’d post a URL but I am on mobile. Mary was quite the captivating character and there’s a number of other speeches and interviews on YouTube, as well.
- trimbo 6y agoI apparently can't summon the correct search terms to find the audio of the Nobel lecture. Can you provide a link?
- runjake 6y agoInteresting. I cannot find it now, either. It was audio only and just had a static slide of the US penny-resembling Nobel logo on a white background for the "video".
- PIKAL 6y agoPeople talk about Karys inexplicable beliefs about HIV. Why does nobody point out, as written in the speech, the fact that prior to PCR Kary explained the process of PCR to all of the biochemists around him in great detail, and nobody even raised an eyebrow. nobody believed him. How could anyone call himself a biochemist if they couldn’t recognize a biochemical revolution after being slapped in the face with it by the person who invented it? There wasn’t a single missing step according to Kary, the entire process was mapped out and consisted of procedures and chemicals that already existed. This amazing paradox is lost on most people. They overlook it just like those fools overlooked PCR-on-a-silver-platter. It’s the dark truth. Most scientists and doctors are basically frauds. They just memorize what the real scientists have figured out so far.
- oblio 6y agoYour two paragraphs don't seem to be related, am I missing something?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nwah1 6y agoWhich scientists failed to raise an eyebrow? Mullis won the most prestigious award from his peers that exists in the world.
- tpmx 6y agoHe didn't specify, but from the speech: > Monday morning I was in the library. The moment of truth. By afternoon it was clear. For whatever reasons, there was nothing in the abstracted literature about succeeding or failing to amplify DNA by the repeated reciprocal extension of two primers hybridized to the separate strands of a particular DNA sequence. By the end of the week I had talked to enough molecular biologists to know that I wasn’t missing anything really obvious. No one could recall such a process ever being tried. > However, shocking to me, not one of my friends or colleagues would get excited over the potential for such a process. True. I was always having wild ideas, and this one maybe looked no different than last week’s. But it WAS different. There was not a single unknown in the scheme. Every step involved had been done already. Everyone agreed that you could extend a primer on a DNA template, everyone knew you could melt double stranded DNA. Everyone agreed that what you could do once, you could do again.
- D-Coder 6y ago"The first successful experiment happened on December 16th. I remember the date. It was the birthday of Cynthia, my former wife from Kansas City, who had encouraged me to write fiction and bore us two fine sons. I had strayed from Cynthia eventually to spend two tumultuous years with Jennifer. When I was sad for any other reason, I would also grieve for Cynthia. There is a general place in your brain, I think, reserved for “melancholy of relationships past.” It grows and prospers as life progresses, forcing you finally, against your grain, to listen to country music." This guy is a genius.
- guilhas 6y agoI like the interview where he says Fauci doesn't understand anything he talks about