We all make them. Mistakes come naturally to everyone, and scientists are not excused from a little humiliation. Nature has been exposing careless statements and wrongful hypothesis for more than a century, and, luckily for us, keeping archives of every wordy tidbit. Here are a few of the “natural” gems hidden beneath a history of scientific research, whose blunders we can’t help but enjoy. After all, we’re only human.
Fish-eating lepers?
A hundred years ago, Nature attacked one scientist’s claim that leprosy was caused by eating fish that were in the first stages of decomposition. The author, Jonathan Hutchinson, drew a correlation between cases of leprosy in the British Isles and Europe to the increase of fish consumption due to the Roman Catholic ordinances for eating fish two out of every three weekdays. The decline of fish-eating during the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism, according to Hutchinson, led to the gradual decline of leprosy.
His theory was built on postulates that did not agree-to put it mildly-with the scientific consensus then or today. Women ate more fish and were more likely to be lepers than men, he stated, despite statistics (today and then) that find twice as many male than female cases of leprosy. He specified that neither salted nor fresh fish could cause leprosy, the reason being that an almost-bad fish is necessary to modify the bacteria that causes tuberculosis into the bacteria that cause leprosy. He “disproved” the fact that the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae were the single, contagious cause of the disease, as leprosy afflicts people worldwide. His insistence that leprosy must arise de novo, independently and unconnected to any other cases of the disease, sparked a sharp critique, from which Nature was careful to assure him did not belittle his interesting work. Yet, being proved wrong on every point of argument would certainly do little for Hutchinson’s morale.
Unholy mouths
A steady exodus of scientists flowed from the United Kingdom to the United States during the late 1960’s, eliciting a number of aggressive statements from the top politicians of both countries. Robert MacNamara, then U.S. Secretary of Defense, addressed the matter of brain drain:
“The brain drain occurs not merely because we have a more advanced technology here in the United States, but rather because we have more modern and effective management. God is clearly democratic. He distributes brain-power universally. But he quite justifiably expects us to do something efficient and constructive with that priceless gift. That is what management is all about.”
Understandably enraged, Anthony Crosland, then U.K. Secretary of State for Education and Science, responded by pointing out that God’s equally distributed intelligence is not the only factor to consider.
“One thing that God does not distribute equally is wealth,” he said. “Brains move from every country of the world to America [because America] is the richest country in the world and can pay much for brains.”
Death certificates-mightier than thou
Worldwide exposures to asbestos began as early as 1890 in South Africa with the introduction of the mineral into industrial and commercial uses. By 1967, there were 250 registered cases of asbestos-related cancers in Britain, and perhaps more which could not be traced to asbestos exposure. At that time, research into the hazards of asbestos was beginning to unite globally, in surveys, laboratory and field work. Scientists began to undertake follow-up studies of employees of shipyards and factories where asbestos was known to be used, sometimes taking as long as four years to trace most of the men and women exposed. In Britain, records of some female employees were lost entirely when marriages took place and names were changed. The director of Britain’s MRC Pneumoconiosis Unit at Penarth, had criticized the fallibility of Britain’s record-keeping methods for the situation and praised those in the United States, and in particular Finland, whose “magnificent death certificates” were to be envied.
Source: Nature 28 February 1907, Nature 4 March 1967
-Sandy Huen
