4 ms·

In my opinion, we're possessed by a cultural epidemic of think pieces doing rich and nuanced science history, but wrongly framed in the form of correcting "myth

In my opinion, we're possessed by a cultural epidemic of think pieces doing rich and nuanced science history, but wrongly framed in the form of correcting "myths" that, in their substance amount to quibblings over narrative emphasis. It's easy to get taken in by the framing because it truly is enlightening, and the argument goes down so smooth because its embedded in a rich, curious, and fascinating scientific history that otherwise embodies best practices I would happily celebrate. But the key details about the story of penicillin are that a moldy plate showed bacteria-free clearing, Fleming saw it, isolated the mold, proved its germ-killing filtrate and published the finding, which is the heart of the story and which is not a myth. I'm sure it's true enough that St Mary's windows were usually kept shut to keep pathogens in and contaminants out, that London's August 1928 cold snap would have slowed staph growth, that Fleming's first notes Or 8 weeks later than the actual event, and that a modern plate seeded with bacteria first will not produce the celebrated halo unless the mold is given a head start. The article makes much of the fact that today’s researchers cannot reproduce the famous halo if they add staph first, yet that difficulty rebuts a sequence Fleming never claimed to have used. These points are significant, even fascinating, yet the article inflates them into a strobe-lit "MYTH" banner, turning normal human imprecision about times and temperatures into evidence of wholesale fiction, which abuses the ordinary friction of any retrospective account and punishes the story for the very human messiness that makes it instructive. The window quibble, the incubator gap, and the replication protocol do not touch the central, uncontested fact that chance contamination plus observational curiosity gave medicine its first antibiotic.

deleted 11mo ago
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kieranmaine 11mo ago
> The window quibble, the incubator gap, and the replication protocol do not touch the central, uncontested fact that chance contamination plus observational curiosity gave medicine its first antibiotic. This is the same conclusion as the article. IMO, the importance of challenging the myth is that it has hisotrically taken precendence over your (and the article's) conclusion. FTA > Fleming’s 1929 penicillin paper may have been written as a linear process, but that’s almost certainly not how the discovery occurred. And by eliminating these complicated twists and turns, Fleming inadvertently obscured what may be one of the most important lessons in scientific history: how combining a meticulous research program with the openness to branch out into new directions led him to Nobel Prize-winning success. Neither rigid plans nor the winds of chance are enough on their own; discovery requires both.
- NetMageSCW 11mo ago
  I think that the author had the conclusion wanted before picking the story that supported the desired conclusion as best. To me that story overlooks too many documented facts as well as human behavior. They complain that it requires lottery odds for the first story to happen while ignoring that one win is documented - there was a cold snap exactly when Fleming we t on vacation. Both stories require the winning odds of the mold contaminating a culture - the mold wouldn’t have needed to be identified if Fleming was deliberately experimenting with a known mold from his colleague. So the only undocumented luck left would be the use of that contaminated culture just before vacation. And which is more likely - Fleming imagining the initial discovery happening right as he returned from vacation or that he remembered those important details but forgot more minor ones?
awkward 11mo ago
It's a myth in the most literal way. Fleming published and promoted his results despite a lack of reproducibility. By the time he won the Nobel Prize, he had backformed or misremembered a folksy story about an open window. That's textbook mythmaking. It can both be fine to have a glib story to tell schoolkids and important to recognize that the actual intellectual process is messier and more complex.
- somenameforme 11mo ago
  The path to his discovery may have been difficult to replicate, but the fact that the mold could kill other bacteria was not, and was immediately replicated. It just wasn't seen as relevant because, at the time, few people imagined its internal use in humans and it was instead seen more as a tool for other microbiologists and the like. The jump to "And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?" took quite some time.
- pcrh 11mo ago
  I have now actually read Flemming's 1929 manuscript that first described penicillin [0]. It is a careful and well documented scientific report describing the action of penicillin on various species of bacteria, how to produce it, and some of its chemical properties. It describes how penicillin can kill bacteria isolated from the throats of nurses, and shows that it has low toxicity in mice, and is possibly safe for use in humans: "Constant irrigation of large infected surfaces in man was not accompanied by any toxic symptoms, while irrigation of the human conjunctiva every hour for a day had no irritant effect." It is far from having a "lack of reproducibility" and in fact allowed others to quickly and accurately replicate his discovery. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2048009/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2048009/
quesera 11mo ago
Definitely worded for clicks, but remember that "myth" doesn't mean "false story", it just means "story".
- lazide 11mo ago
  Myth absolutely implies false (or at least exaggerated) story elements. If it wasn’t, we’d call it history. And you can tell - ‘the history of penicillin’ implies a very different thing than ‘the myth of penicillin’ eh?
  - quesera 11mo ago
    That's an incorrect conclusion to draw, though. A mythology is just a system of stories and beliefs. Nationalism, religion, fandom, etc. All mythologies based on a shared set of stories. Some are more true (and/or complete) than others, but that's not the important part of being a mythology. Note also that we do call mythology "history". It's just a matter of where you inhabit on the contextual spectrum. I'm sure you can think of several trivially-refuted examples, and I'm also sure that you realize that your preferred narrative is equally refuted by others. You're correct of course, and they are not. But also the converse.
    - lazide 11mo ago
      It’s literally in the definition of the word. Mythology is also separated from history in the study of it, at least in the west, because history is required to be based on independently verified facts. Mythology clearly is not.
      - quesera 11mo ago
        You are putting way too much faith in the knowability of a historical thing, at the level of detail required to construct and cohere a narrative. That's convenient, if your preferred mythology matches up to your culture's mainstream accepted view of history. But it is not definitionally more correct. This is the cognitive bias/belief side of Gell-Mann amnesia, as held by a culture. I am not discounting the possibility that some mythologies are more true, or more supported, or more plausible, than others. Just that it's not a requirement or a disqualification.
irjustin 11mo ago
> The window quibble, the incubator gap, and the replication protocol do not touch the central, uncontested fact that chance contamination plus observational curiosity gave medicine its first antibiotic. Personally for me, while less important, I really appreciate the investigation into the narrative. I agree that the science is more important and the results don't care about the story. The balance is that we don't need to go around correcting everyone, but knowing more about the details of the story is worth my time in reading this piece. I think the article strikes the right tone.
- somenameforme 11mo ago
  To be anal about being anal, the article doesn't preclude Fleming's account. It argues that it's unlikely, but countless highly improbable things are happening every second. On this topic somehow Ancient Egyptian poultices (and in cultures onward - though they are the oldest recorded account) even used moldy bread to treat bacterial infections, somehow stumbling onto genuine antibacterial aspects for an absurdly counter-intuitive treatment that has a real effect. However it was initially discovered back then, let alone replicated and confirmed, must have been through an unimaginably improbable series of events. Yet it happened. That's rather the story of humanity.
deleted 11mo ago
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deleted 11mo ago

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kieranmaine 11mo ago

> The window quibble, the incubator gap, and the replication protocol do not touch the central, uncontested fact that chance contamination plus observational curiosity gave medicine its first antibiotic. This is the same conclusion as the article. IMO, the importance of challenging the myth is that it has hisotrically taken precendence over your (and the article's) conclusion. FTA > Fleming’s 1929 penicillin paper may have been written as a linear process, but that’s almost certainly not how the discovery occurred. And by eliminating these complicated twists and turns, Fleming inadvertently obscured what may be one of the most important lessons in scientific history: how combining a meticulous research program with the openness to branch out into new directions led him to Nobel Prize-winning success. Neither rigid plans nor the winds of chance are enough on their own; discovery requires both.

NetMageSCW 11mo ago
I think that the author had the conclusion wanted before picking the story that supported the desired conclusion as best. To me that story overlooks too many documented facts as well as human behavior. They complain that it requires lottery odds for the first story to happen while ignoring that one win is documented - there was a cold snap exactly when Fleming we t on vacation. Both stories require the winning odds of the mold contaminating a culture - the mold wouldn’t have needed to be identified if Fleming was deliberately experimenting with a known mold from his colleague. So the only undocumented luck left would be the use of that contaminated culture just before vacation. And which is more likely - Fleming imagining the initial discovery happening right as he returned from vacation or that he remembered those important details but forgot more minor ones?

awkward 11mo ago

It's a myth in the most literal way. Fleming published and promoted his results despite a lack of reproducibility. By the time he won the Nobel Prize, he had backformed or misremembered a folksy story about an open window. That's textbook mythmaking. It can both be fine to have a glib story to tell schoolkids and important to recognize that the actual intellectual process is messier and more complex.

somenameforme 11mo ago
The path to his discovery may have been difficult to replicate, but the fact that the mold could kill other bacteria was not, and was immediately replicated. It just wasn't seen as relevant because, at the time, few people imagined its internal use in humans and it was instead seen more as a tool for other microbiologists and the like. The jump to "And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?" took quite some time.
pcrh 11mo ago
I have now actually read Flemming's 1929 manuscript that first described penicillin [0]. It is a careful and well documented scientific report describing the action of penicillin on various species of bacteria, how to produce it, and some of its chemical properties. It describes how penicillin can kill bacteria isolated from the throats of nurses, and shows that it has low toxicity in mice, and is possibly safe for use in humans: "Constant irrigation of large infected surfaces in man was not accompanied by any toxic symptoms, while irrigation of the human conjunctiva every hour for a day had no irritant effect." It is far from having a "lack of reproducibility" and in fact allowed others to quickly and accurately replicate his discovery. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2048009/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2048009/

quesera 11mo ago

Definitely worded for clicks, but remember that "myth" doesn't mean "false story", it just means "story".

lazide 11mo ago
Myth absolutely implies false (or at least exaggerated) story elements. If it wasn’t, we’d call it history. And you can tell - ‘the history of penicillin’ implies a very different thing than ‘the myth of penicillin’ eh?
- quesera 11mo ago
  That's an incorrect conclusion to draw, though. A mythology is just a system of stories and beliefs. Nationalism, religion, fandom, etc. All mythologies based on a shared set of stories. Some are more true (and/or complete) than others, but that's not the important part of being a mythology. Note also that we do call mythology "history". It's just a matter of where you inhabit on the contextual spectrum. I'm sure you can think of several trivially-refuted examples, and I'm also sure that you realize that your preferred narrative is equally refuted by others. You're correct of course, and they are not. But also the converse.
  - lazide 11mo ago
    It’s literally in the definition of the word. Mythology is also separated from history in the study of it, at least in the west, because history is required to be based on independently verified facts. Mythology clearly is not.
    - quesera 11mo ago
      You are putting way too much faith in the knowability of a historical thing, at the level of detail required to construct and cohere a narrative. That's convenient, if your preferred mythology matches up to your culture's mainstream accepted view of history. But it is not definitionally more correct. This is the cognitive bias/belief side of Gell-Mann amnesia, as held by a culture. I am not discounting the possibility that some mythologies are more true, or more supported, or more plausible, than others. Just that it's not a requirement or a disqualification.

irjustin 11mo ago

> The window quibble, the incubator gap, and the replication protocol do not touch the central, uncontested fact that chance contamination plus observational curiosity gave medicine its first antibiotic. Personally for me, while less important, I really appreciate the investigation into the narrative. I agree that the science is more important and the results don't care about the story. The balance is that we don't need to go around correcting everyone, but knowing more about the details of the story is worth my time in reading this piece. I think the article strikes the right tone.

somenameforme 11mo ago
To be anal about being anal, the article doesn't preclude Fleming's account. It argues that it's unlikely, but countless highly improbable things are happening every second. On this topic somehow Ancient Egyptian poultices (and in cultures onward - though they are the oldest recorded account) even used moldy bread to treat bacterial infections, somehow stumbling onto genuine antibacterial aspects for an absurdly counter-intuitive treatment that has a real effect. However it was initially discovered back then, let alone replicated and confirmed, must have been through an unimaginably improbable series of events. Yet it happened. That's rather the story of humanity.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]