The Loss of Serendipity

Dear Lam,I'm afraid I just have to say something about your garbling of what is almost certainly, as you suggest, the most famous incidence of serendipity in biology if not in the whole of science.Penicillin was identified and isolated by Nobel prizewinner Sir Alexander Fleming. He noticed that a mold growing on a plate of Staphylococcus produced a bacteria free region around itself and showed that such the mold culture anti-bacterial was highly effective even when highly diluted.He also identified lysozyme another important anti-bacterial agent.Your version of events is somewhat lacking in any resemblance to what actually occurred. Unless you were actually thinking of a different event.I just found a lovely little anecdote having typed in fleming and serendipity into google.TTFN,WKP.S. I agree with the general conclusion that the internet has not killed off the serendipitous discovery of information, it has just had a severe impact on the quality of that information.This message has been edited by Wounded King, 09-21-2004 06:42 AM

Dear Lam,I think that the internet is a 2 edged sword when it comes to scientific information. With the advent of more open access publishing coming on stream it is getting to the point where a fair proportion of current scientific literature, especially in the biological sciences, is becoming freely available online.I think it is far preferable for everyone to be able to look at the actual primary resarch papers and discuss things on that basis rather than have to give second hand interpretations filtered through FAQs or message boards.I think it is the prevalence of FAQs claiming to provide ready to use predigested information on a variety of subjects that is the problem. Sometimes it seems like many of the debates here almost end up as a mere reiteration of points from FAQs on opposing sides of a debate.How many times are creationists pointed to the 29+ evidences for macroevolution FAQ, and I'm not saying that it isn't a good FAQ. How are people without a good grounding in the ways of scientific research supposed to be able to evaluate the relative merits of the 29+ FAQ as opposed to some equally well presented creationist FAQ?There is defintite scope for the level of scholarship in such debates to be raised by the resources available on the internet. The problem is educating people as to the best way to debate these things. Of course, this may just be what I consider the 'best' way other people may have their own opinions.TTFN,WK

Reading the thread in the right order I wonder if I have fallen for a joke on Lam's part. His post complaining about abysmal levels of science knowledge seen in some debates, and the contribution of the internet to that, was immediately followed by a horrifically garbled account of the discovery of Penicillin.An example of Lam's subtle and twisted sense of humour or a hugely ironic cock-up? Only Lam can know for sure.TTFN,WKP.S. Damn, am I a sucker or not? I hate not knowing.