Isaac Newton was sitting under a tree when an apple fell on his head and he came up with the idea for gravity. This may be the mother of all accidental discoveries. It may not be historically accurate, but it is certainly a good story, says sociologist of science Willem Halffman. “Regardless of whether it is true or not, in reality such discoveries are never accidental. Scientists regularly find things they weren't expecting, but it’s not like they weren't looking at all. Accidental discovery is therefore the wrong term.” Serendipitous discovery, the unexpected finding of something useful, while you were looking for something completely different, is more appropriate, says Halffman.
LSD
“Take the discovery of Bakelite as an example. Phenolic resin, the substance used to produce Bakelite, was first discovered by Adolf Bayer while he was looking for new types of dyes. That sticky substance seemed to him nothing more than rubbish.” Subsequently, other researchers also stumbled upon the substance without being able to do anything with it. This changed in 1907 – 35 years after Bayer's discovery –when chemist Leo Baekeland came into contact with phenolic resin. “He was looking for an alternative to shellac as an insulating material, but after putting the resin under a press, which caused it to harden, he immediately understood its potential usefulness. Even if you come across something accidentally, you still have to pay attention,” explains Halffman.
LSD is another example. Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann was looking for migraine drugs, but after dipping his finger into the intended drug and sampling it, he felt rather strange that night. A few days later he gave himself a larger dose, and discovered LSD. “The question is always what you do with such a discovery, how you interpret what you observe. The CIA saw LSD as a truth serum, hippies thought they could reach enlightenment with LSD, and later on it was used in psychiatry. Viagra is yet another example. This drug was originally intended to treat heart spasms. The erections were an unwanted side effect. The side effect thus became the main effect.”
Tightly planned research
In order to make unexpected discoveries, scientists need space to be creative, says Halffman. “I'm a sociologist, so in my case this means that I start reading things at random. Such as works of psychologists or philosophers. For a physicist, it could be an experiment in the lab. Like the experiment of Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. In 2004 they peeled off graphite from a pencil with cello-tape until they were left with a graphene layer only a few atoms thick.” They won the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for this discovery.
According to Halffman, scientists now have less space to be creative. “This is partly because scientists have to follow many more protocols in their research. They plan their research very carefully in advance. This contributes to more reliable knowledge, which is a positive development of course, but it also reduces the possibility of discovering something unexpected.
In addition, today’s scientists work much more on a project basis. Research projects are planned from start to finish. The completion dates of the experiments have already been determined, and even the publication dates of the research articles are set in advance. As a result, there is no time to take an interesting detour. I read about a scientist who did not publish for nine years in the late 1960s because he was studying the physiology of zebrafish. That would be impossible today.”
Mess-around Friday
Halffman understands the current trends. Society rightly expects scientists to deliver. At the same time, the above examples show that having space to mess around leads to wonderful discoveries. “The Nobel Prize for the unexpected discovery of Geim and Novoselov therefore appears to be a kind of protest from science. Something like “leave us alone to mess around”. Having time to mess around is a precondition for good science. For example, you could schedule a ‘mess-around day’ on Friday, or if time is scarce, a ‘mess-around afternoon’.”