Ahmed: Some important scientific discoveries were accidents

It took a radio operator to discover something that could be used to treat virtually all forms of cancer. And on the way, he found a way to “burn” salt water. It took a radio operator to discover something that could be used to treat virtually all forms of cancer. And on the way, he found a way to “burn” salt water.

John Kanzius was an American inventor, radio and TV engineer and resident of Erie, Pa. He ended his career in 2003 as a radio station owner when he discovered he had a rare form of leukemia. Experiencing the side effects of conventional chemotherapy, Kanzius was compelled to find a better treatment. In a moment that can only be described as serendipitous, he discovered that a certain radio frequency, when applied to salt water, could cause water to convert into hydrogen and oxygen gas. The gas could then be burned. The process might not have been a way to treat cancer, but it had potential in the future to enhance many different energy-requiring applications.

Eventually, Kanzius returned to his original goal. In a partnership with Dr. David Geller, he discovered that gold and carbon particles could be used to reach only cancer cells in the body. If radio frequencies were applied to the body at a level attuned to the nanoparticles, those cells only would heat up and die. Unfortunately, the technology came too late. Kanzius passed away in 2009. However, his innovation lives on. UPMC is spearheading the development of this technology. Based on promising results, trials are scheduled to run this year.

You learn about the scientific method from an early age. The art that is science is made out to be almost as regimented as the five-paragraph essay. But hopefully, once you enter college, you learn that “introduction, body and conclusion” is sometimes not the best way to write. You find that some of your best literary work might result from simply letting ideas flow as they come.

Similarly, the scientific method, although a time-honored strategy, is not what always leads to discovery. Sometimes in science, things just happen; sparks fly, and reactions occur. If we briefly survey our scientific history, we note that some of our most astounding inventions and discoveries occurred on the basis of chance — they were mere accidents. This might bring into question a perhaps misplaced sense of self-confidence science affords  us when we study the natural world.

There was a time that purple dye — Tyrian dye — was worth its weight in silver. It was a naturally occurring dye that had to be extracted from sea snails. The purple would only deepen with age, and it attracted royals and aristocrats alike, as early as the time of the Phoenicians. Thousands of these snails were pulverized and boiled to extract just one gram of dye.

The dye industry has changed since the days of antiquity. Sir William Henry Perkin, an English chemist, was working in 1856 to synthesize quinine, a substance in high demand for the treatment of malaria. It was during one of these experiments, using aniline as a precursor molecule, that he accidentally discovered the first synthetic dye, a deep purple he named mauveine. At the age of 18, he had found a cheap substitute to the much-flaunted Tyrian dye. His discovery was not calculated, not estimated and not predicted.

If there is one constant reminder of your mortality, it is your ticker. The heartbeat hypothesis proposes that each individual has a set number of heartbeats or breaths allotted, constituting a lifetime. But what do you do when you’ve ticked your last? Get an artificial pacemaker of course — we’re not going away that easily. Artificial pacemakers have a long history in science and medicine. However, before the 1950s, the different models available were not viable as implantable pacemakers. Often, they were cumbersome and had to be plugged into a wall socket.

Wilson Greatbatch was an American engineer and inventor. He already had the notion that heart activity could be modeled by electronics. In 1958, while trying to create a circuit to record heart sounds, he accidentally used a resistor 100 times as resistive as he intended; they’re really small, after all. The circuit cycled a pulse for 1.8 milliseconds, was silent for the next second, and repeated itself — a perfect human heartbeat. Combined with his ongoing tinkering with small batteries, the accident constituted the first implantable pacemaker, which has saved millions of lives since its inception, as reported by The New York Times in Greatbatch’s commemoration.

The primary causes of death in the United States are heart disease and cancer. This was not always the case. History before antibiotics is often mocked with the depiction of a fellow suffering a scratch and subsequently dying. Yet this was indeed the state of affairs. Bacterial infections were deadly.

Sir Alexander Fleming was a Scottish biologist and pharmacologist. In 1928, he was continuing his work researching staphylococcus, a bacterium. Fleming often kept his laboratory untidy. After returning from a holiday, he noticed one of his staphylococci cultures had been contaminated by a fungus. The mold was excreting a substance that was killing the bacteria. He identified the fungus as part of the Penicillium genus, and he subsequently labeled the antibiotic penicillin. As you probably know, this antibiotic and its subsequent derivatives revolutionized medical practice. We usually don’t die from scratches anymore.

Some of our most necessary discoveries have occurred by chance. It was mere happenstance, serendipity that produced a result. However, is this part of science or not? Perhaps it is. Beyond predicting what will happen, science aims to describe and explain what did happen. However, it might still make one uneasy to see that these discoveries were not directly the product of human agency. What if these accidents — and countless others — had not happened? It’s an unsettling thought.

Still, there is one vestige of hope in this extraordinary history. The fact is, accidents just happen, but one must know what to do with them. As Louis Pasteur claimed, “Chance favors only the prepared mind.” In each of these cases, the chemist, the inventor and the biologist knew what to do with the opportunity chance granted them. Human agency is still necessary, and it always will be. As with mutations, accidents are almost guaranteed to happen. Sometimes they have dire effects, and sometimes they propel us beyond what would have been possible under normal circumstances. We can be sure that accidents will always happen in science.

Write Abdul at aba24@pitt.edu.