Episode 2: A Mistaken Identity

People have a strong belief that Scientists always believe they are correct. This is a serious misconception as really we work tirelessly to devise new ways of proving everything wrong.

A theory, or hypothesis as we like to call our musings, is merely accepted until proven incorrect. A bit like innocent until proven guilty. Hypotheses (what you are trying to prove) are put on trial (experiment) and if the most up to date findings support your hypothesis, you claim this accepted as the correct detailing of events... until research advances in such a way as to prove you wrong and put forward the new accepted theory.

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

~ Thomas A. Edison

 

Well said Tommy. So REALLY, the universe and everything in it is just described the best way we know how at that time, as you can imagine, jumps forward in technology and advancements in research lead to the unveiling of some quite cataclysmic mistakes.

 

Some of the absolutely greatest discoveries have been made by accident; here are some of my favourites;

1.       The microbiologist in me just couldn’t have a discussion on scientific mistakes and not mention Alexander Fleming.

Who is this you ask? He has probably impacted your life on a scale you can’t even imagine. Mr Fleming, quite accidentally, discovered Penicillin. No one has come close to a discovery in health anything like it since. Imagine how many times you yourself in a single lifetime have had a course of antibiotics, less than 100 years ago every single one of those infections could have killed you.

Clearing away contaminated Petri dishes (pictured) in 1928, he noticed that the offending mould contaminating the plates had killed off the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus in the dish.

And actually the only reason he even thought of looking for a substance that could kill bacteria and not harm the body was because, one day, 6 years earlier, his Mucus (snotters, let’s face it) accidentally fell into a Petri dish of bacteria and killed them off.

No exaggeration, you are probably only alive today because someone didn’t sniff in time to catch the drip on a bad day at work.

2.       My second favourite accident incorporates my second favourite thing – fashion. Sir William Henry Perkin, a notable chemist with not a very notable barber.

“Women transform into birds of paradise at night.”

~ Kurt Geiger

 

Have you ever watched a documentary about life pre-1900s life and noticed how drab and boring everything looks, as if everyone’s favourite colour palette is brown/beige/grey? This wasn’t a lack of creative designer inspiration but actually they just no physical way to create the bright and vibrant colours we see in nature. Fabrics don’t just grown on trees in a variety of neon and pastel hues to delight our S/S runway collections. They are dyed. Ding ding cue my next favourite mistake Mr Perkin!

 

In 1856 Perkin was hotly pursuing a groundbreaking new treatment for Malaria. His Experiments aimed to extract a compound called quinine but ended only with a nasty brown precipitate. Round 2 and attempts with aniline give a black precipitate. Clearly having an open mind about where this was going, add a dash of alcohol aaaaaand... no cure for malaria BUT the little mess had turned a wonderful purple colour.  Boom. The first inexpensive synthetic dye in the most coveted colour and symbol of wealth at the time, purple.

 

Perkin was an avid Painter/Photographer and realised the significance of the discovery and we have a new age of synthetic dyes and extremely happy fashion industry. His hobbies also prove my point that Scientists a)are sometimes remotely normal and have other hobbies and b)that we actually quite enjoy making mistakes.