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Week 9 [11.12 - 17.12.2017] Is Scientific Community Accepting of New Ideas?


We all want to believe that science is about pushing the boundaries of knowledge,
breaking the status quo and persuading curious ideas, even if the majority of people find them unbelievable. But is it so?

There are many cases of scientists who were disgraced and persecuted by the scientific
community simply because their findings challenged the already existing beliefs.


Humberto Maturana and Lynn Margulis


Humberto Maturana is a prominent biologist who studied the examples of symbiosis
between organisms: fungi that control the ants (there are farming ants that grow fungi
for food) or the parasites that hijack the brains of snails.


https://www.une.edu.au/__data/assets/image/0005/24791/leucochloridium-paradoxum.jpg

Maturana wondered how is it possible that a symbiosis so complex as the one between
a worm and a snail could ever take place? It occurred it is actually a more general
argument about the evolution. What comes first: the design or the application?

Maturana clearly refused the answers that are typically given: it takes a long time.
He asked instead what kind of a process is required to create such symbiosis and
his answer was: co-evolution. These two species couldn't have developed
independently and then discover that one can become a parasite on the other.
The chances for such coincidence are infinitesimal.  As this happens over and over
again everywhere, all through the fossil history, it cannot be a chance. He concluded
that nature develops as a system. This is what he means by co-evolution, but this
also implies that our entire view of biology is wrong, because we view it as a collection
of independent species, which we can't do if we wish to explain these complex
developments. We must view it all as an evolving system. He is the author of
the philosophy of Gea - the entire earth is a single complex living organism that
always evolves as a single organism.

Lynn Margulis came to the same conclusion and adopted Maturana's aproach.
She states that our cells are an outcome of the symbiosis between a proto-virus
and a proto-bacteria that combined DNA into one! She was horribly attacked for
about two decades. Her academic career was ruined and her husband left her
for a complete idiot (like himself). Then DNA analysis proved her theory.


The phenomena that Maturana and Margulis observed challenged the Darwinistic
view of evolution. For that reason their theories were found problematic by
the mainstream scientific community and instantly rejected without a proper evaluation.

Dan Shechtman


Years ago Dan Shechtman worked as usual in his lab but this time he happened
to accidentally observe something interesting through his electron microscope.
He could not believe it as there was no such "creature" known in existence.
His finding of quasicrystals was so unusual he checked it several times and took
the whole two years to publish his results in a peer-reviewed journal.
All these precautions did not help him. He was vehemently attacked and personally
disgraced by the the scientific community for challenging the existing state of
knowledge. Shechtman proposed to anyone to repeat his simple experiment as it
was easily replicated, but the community was not interested.
His persecution has not stop for years and Dan was traumatized.
Linus Pauling, Nobel laureate, said on a prominent conference in front of a large
scientific audience:
"Danny Shechtman is talking nonsense, there are no quasi-crystals, just quasi-scientists."

Almost 30 years later Dan Shechtman won a Nobel prize in chemistry for his discovery
of quasicrystals. Linus Pauling, until his death, refused to admit that quasicrystals exist.

Have you heard about Maturana, Margulis or Shechtman?
Do you know other scientists who were persecuted for their discoveries
by the community?
Do you think there is a way to improve how academic community approaches
new discoveries or is it simply the way we humans are?

Sources:
https://msu.edu/course/lbs/145/luckie/margulis.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jan/06/dan-shechtman-nobel-prize-chemistry-interview
https://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/worlds-deadliest/deadliest-zombie-snails

Comments

Unknown said…
Yes in the past I have heard something about them. It's so sad that great people when they are still alive are opressed. For example the dicovery of Kopernik was hidden for many years. I think that the world forgot about Kompernik for many years because it was easier. His discovery was in forbidden books. I think that for people it is easier to live in ignorance. There is a saying " the less you know the better you sleep" there is a lot of truth in it.

Alicja said…
interesting, thanks. There is certainly some truth to this saying.
hat was a very interesting article. I didn’t know those stories. I think that people in the scientific community have to be sceptical and doubt new discoveries to be 100 percent sure that they are true. After all there are many examples of scientist who presented false study results to prove they point. For example Michael Pearce wrote about surgeries and patients who didn’t even exist! Nonetheless scientific community shouldn’t reject ideas without thoroughly examining them first.
Alicja said…
thanks for your comment, I'm glad you found the post interesting :) You raise an important point. Scientific misconduct is certainly one of the most serious problems in the scientific community.
Yevhen Shymko said…
This is not only the problem of scientific communities but rather people as a whole. It is enough to remember that it took almost 50 years doctors to realize that it is a good idea to wash you hands before taking a child from pregnant woman. Being conservative is in your DNA and what helps us survive. There is even Chinese course "I wish you to live in times of great change".
Alicja said…
thank you for your comment.
I do agree that being conservative has helped humanity to survive, especially in the harsh conditions. However, I have a feeling there is more to this. Specifically, that many times scientific community defends their ideas like Inquisition. There is no room for questions being asked. Don't you think it may stem from from their personal issues (their career being at stake, academic power struggle)?
Unknown said…
As Richard Feynman once said, "Have no respect whatsoever for authority". Same thing I've heard from Neil Tyson in a "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" series, and one another: "The purpose of physics is to answer the question 'Why?'". I think that those who were disgrasing Dan Shechtman and Humberto Maturana are just forgot those simple principles.
People who are keep asking questions about the nature, the society, and so on, are the people who lead us to the brightest(or the darkest?) future :)
Alicja said…
thanks, your comment is excellent. I really like Feynman's rebellious attitude and no bullshit approach. He also said in relation to this: "I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers which can't be questioned".
BTW Neil Tyson, I watched him in the YouTube show Hot Ones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da8-QfGemgo I was impressed with both his knowledge and his coolness! The presenter: you were voted "The sexiest astrophysicist" by People Magazine. Tyson: "that was 30 pounds ago".
Maciej Główka said…
Very interesting article, I haven't heard about those scientists. In my opinion people in all scientific communities should have open mind and be sceptic in order to invent or proof something new. They should overcome their jelousy for greater purpose.
Unfortunately, I don't know any other scientists who were persecuted for their discoveries.
Alicja said…
thanks, I'm happy you enjoyed the post. You are right, that's exactly the approach that the scientific community should have.
Tomasz Morawski said…
I've never heard about those scientists but I'm sure I'll read something about them.
I think the most known example of that situation were Galileo and Kopernik and how they were treated by the society.
Well, there has to be a way of improving that but being sceptical is a part of science as well - imagine what would happen if everyone believed that vaccines are actually harmful.
Unknown said…
Interesting article.

Everybody would like to believe, that scientists are honest and enlightened philantropes that want to make world a better place. Unfortunately, scientists are only humans and they have their flaws. The same with politicians and, actually, any other community.

I think anybody that has a revolutionary idea has to deal with conservative part of the community and there are plenty of examples of such people. Some of them are Gregor Mendel (genetic inheritance), Alfred Wegener (continental drifts), Amedeo Avogadro, Copernicus, Galileo Galilei or Aristarchus of Samos.
Alicja said…
thanks for your comment. Excellent example with Galileo and Copernicus. Especially Galileo, who was put on trial by the Roman Catholic Inquisition. Good observation that a certain amount of scepticism is required in science. The madness of anti-vaccination movement seems infinite :)
Alicja said…
fantastic examples, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I strongly agree with your opinion that we as a society often forget that scientists are just humans like us, with their own weaknesses and private interests.
Unknown said…
I haven't heard about none of them, but I really enjoyed readung it. Actually, what Maturana saw and thought is amazing. This is obvious question, but it wasn't asked before. Why? Probably, most of the scientists want to find answers, but some of them forget how imposrtant is to ask a good question.
I believe that the most known scientisn, whom idea was rejected by everyone was Aristarchus of Samos and his heliocentric theory.
A friend of a friend of mine had his major thesis in maths rejected because, although mathematically sound, at the time it wasn't considered in line with the accepted theory.

I believe what he wrote about became known as the banach-tarski paradox a few years later.

There's a video about it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s86-Z-CbaHA
I think the problem is that people aren't always honest about their findings. Plus errors happen like everywhere else, so it's safer to stick to the already proven version.
Alicja said…
thanks for commenting, I'm glad you liked it :) Your Aristarchus of Samos example is excellent, because his ideas were also rejected due to not being consistent with the existing models, much like in the case of the presented scientists. I agree that Maturana's discovery was fascinating and I think that Margulis is one of the most intelligent people of the XX century.
Alicja said…
Wow, very interesting! :) Was your friend of a friend from Warsaw School of Mathematics?
Do you know if he preserved his writings?
I love Vsauce!
I have never heard about them but thier stories are fascinating. It has to be great feeling when after a years of persecution someone is finally appreciated.
I really don't know about any others scientists that were persecuted for their discovieries, really.
Maybe there is a way to improve how academic community approaches new discoveries but I think that it will take a lot of time and probably some of the scientists would be against such changes. Most of them want to be remembered as someone who was right and if someone is undermining their discoveries- they are trying to defend their discoveries.
Magdalena Popek said…
I haven't heard of any of them, unfortunately. I knew the scientific community may be closed to new ideas, theories or inventions but I am shocked they can even prosecute people. It definitely shouldn't be that way. I think such situations happen because professors do not like their knowledge to be questioned. Generally people do not like to be proved wrong, and when you try to convince them they were not right they start to defend what they know or believe in every possible way.
Alicja said…
thanks for sharing your thoughts, I'm glad you liked the stories :) If you enjoyed them you may also like to hear the story of Virginia Steen-McIntyre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hueyatlaco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yo2FluHZUc
Alicja said…
thanks, very true, sometimes the higher the professor's rank the less he likes to be questioned ;)
Nothing guarantees that everybody we discovered so far is the only truth that should be taken as a rule and not doubted for a second.

Science evolves all the time, and so methods of proving it. I can't even count how many times we were wrong in the past, corrected our false knowledge, only to find out a few hundreds years later that it's wrong as well.

This goes all the time, personally I don't believe it's even possible to be 100% sure on anything, even the most researched things we can think of. There is no guarantee that somebody in 1000 years won't say "that assumption was good enough, but it was missing one interesting detail".

We should always keep in mind that what we believe in and take as a rule might be false, and always have open mind for change, regardless how much it's against our vision on particular thing.
Unknown said…
I think first of all that our school programs have to be changed. The material that we are learning is based on the old scientific discoveries which completely ignore new ones. No, I have never heard of these scientists and discoveries, and I think they are very important to be communicated to the world.
Alicja said…
You have an interesting take on this topic, thanks for sharing.
Alicja said…
thanks for your comment. I could not agree more. The education system must change. It is a pity we are not taught about these scientists and critical thinking in general.

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