Chance Discoveries: Unintended Breakthroughs in Scientific Research

1. Section 1.4 Scientific Research

2. Types of Scientific Investigations • Pure Research • Gain knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself • Applied Research • Undertaken to solve a specific problem

3. Chance Discoveries • Planned research can result in unexpected conclusions • Always look for chance discoveries!

4. Examples of Chance Discoveries • Nylon • The discovery of Nylon, like so many other things, was almost entirely by pure chance. Nylon itself is a synthetic material with a structure very similar to silk. The discovery was made by a team of chemists working for the Du Pont company under the supervision of Wallace Hume Carothers. The team of chemists had been working to create a synthetic product much like silk, cellulose or rubber and eventually stumbled upon what they called Nylon. After it's discovery, Nylon would eventually become the single most important product that the Du Pont company had ever put on the market. • Penicillin • Alexander Fleming was a young bacteriologist at St. Mary's Hospital in London in 1928. One day in his cluttered laboratory, he noticed that a culture dish of bacteria had been invaded by a mold whose spore must have drifted in through an open window. Under the microscope, he saw that, all around the mold, the individual bacteria that he had been growing had burst. He saved the mold, and from it produced the first penicillin.

5. Vaccines • In 1879, Louis Pasteur inoculated some chickens with cholera bacteria. It was supposed to kill them, but Pasteur or one of his assistants had accidentally used a culture from an old jar and the chickens merely got sick and recovered. Later, Pasteur inoculated them again with a fresh culture that he knew to be virulent, and the chickens didn't even get sick. Chance had led him to discover the principle of vaccination for disease prevention. • Neurophysiology • In 1791 Luigi Galvani was an anatomist at the University of Bologna. Galvani was investigating the nerves in frog legs, and had threaded some legs on copper wire hanging from a balcony in such a way that a puff of wind caused the legs to touch the iron railing. A spark snapped and the legs jerked violently (even today, we speak of being "galvanized" into action). In one unintended step, Galvani had observed a closed electrical circuit, and related electricity to nerve impulses.

6. X-Rays • Wilhelm Roentgen was experimenting with electrical discharges one evening at the University of Wurzburg in 1895. There was a screen coated with a barium compound lying to one side, and Roentgen noticed that it would fluoresce when an electrical discharge would occur in the tube he was watching. On reaching for the screen, Roentgen got his hand between the discharge tube and the screen and saw the bones of his own hand through the shadow of his skin. In 1901, Roentgen received the Nobel prize for his accidental discovery of X-rays. • Velcro • Chance played a part when the Swiss engineer George de Mestral conceived the idea for Velcro in 1948. After returning from a walk he found seed pods sticking to his socks and to his dog. When he examined the pods under a microscope he saw how tiny hooks had caught in the loops of the wool (Figure 46). He developed a method of reproducing the hooks and loops in woven nylon for use in clothing instead of buttons and zips (Figure 47). He called the product Velcro from a combination of velours (velvet) and crochet (hook), and the product went on to have many other uses including medicine (for joining the chambers of an artificial heart) and the space programme (for securing objects in a weightless environment).

7. Botox • Jean Carruthers, a Canadian ophthalmologist, was treating a patient in 1987 for a rare eye disorder known as blepharospasm. The off-the-wall ailment causes excessive blinking of the eyes and, in some, makes the eyelids to slam shut. Dr. Carruthers treated the woman with Botox, a then largely unknown substance which reduces activity in overactive muscles by blocking nerve impulses. It was a seemingly unlikely use of the botulinium toxin, which in purest form, is the deadliest known to science. However, tiny amounts worked well to halt the patient’s debilitating eye disorder. But, even with no symptoms, the patient kept coming back to Dr. Carruthers’ office, telling the doctor that each time she received a Botox injection, the wrinkles between her brows seemed to disappear, leaving a relaxed, untroubled expression on her face. The patient actually thought she looked younger. Because Jean’s husband, Alastair, is a dermatologist, he found the story of the blepharospasm patient intriguing and looked further into how Botox could be used to enhance people’s appearance.