provocative opinion Better Mousetraps, Expert Advice, and the Lessons of History Paul G. Seybold Wright State University, Dayton, OH 45435
"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." These words have inspired generations of scientists, engineers, and inventors. How nice to think that when you have conceived a new idea or invention the world will greet you with open arms and possibly shower you with fame and fortune. There's iust one oroblem with this quaint notion: i t is rarely true. History teaches a different lesson. Significant advances tend to result from bold, intuitive leaps into the unknown--revolutionary steps that naturally generate resistance--and the woods are full of critics, "experts", and others auite willine to scoff a t vour new idea., ooint to its flaws (reaf or imagined), and off; a discouraging word. Even authorities and exoerts have a far-from-admirable track record: many outstanding scientists have failed, a t one time or another, to recognize the brilliance of a new concept or the promise of a new device. Lack of foresieht is. of course. bv no means limited to science and tech;lolo& ( 1 3 ) . so&"of the finest examples come from the "dismal science" of economics. An old bit of Wall Street wisdom says that ifyou are thinking of buying a stock. vou should ask vour broker for advice. If he or she says "No", you should buy it. If you ask 10 brokers, and they all say "No", you should mortgage your home and buy it! Indeed, a preponderance of optimism among professional money managers is considered a ne~ative(bearish) indicator foithe stock market, and a preponderance ofpessimism is considered positive bullish^. The success of contrnrian investingover a follow-the-herdapproach has been pnwen repeatedly over the years. A single cxample (41will treasurv bills suffice.A rcccnt studv of returns on 30-vear " ~ - since December l 9 8 i shows that investors who followed the consensus of experts' bond-yield forecasts during the period would have earned a n average a m u a l return of 8.8%.Those bettingagainst the consensus would have netted an average return of 13.7%! Willingness to espouse unpopular and contrarian ideas is just as important in science and technology as it is in investing. Yet those espousing such ideas oRen face harsh criticism and enormous obstacles. New ideas and inventions, no matter how meritorious, are not always met with enthusiasm. We do young scientists and engineers a disservice if we fail to prepare them for this hard truth.
-
.
~
~~~~~~
.
The Human Side Beyond the damages of ideas abandoned and inventions delayed lie the personal stories-both tragedies and inspiring triumphs-of the scientists and inventors who have been the recipients of unfair criticism or unwise advice. Alook at the receptions afforded some of the most in'After the retraction Galileo is supposed to have muttered the famous words "Eppursi rnuovWnevertheless it does move". In common with many such expressions,these words were most likely not unered (6).
392
Journal of Chemical Education
-
fluential ideas of science and technolow. and their orieinators, is instructive. One is oRen reminded of the words from Ecclesiastes: ". . . that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, . . . nor yet riches to men of underto them all". standing. - . . but time and chance haooeneth .Galileo Galilei was a superb builder of telescopes, probably the best of his time. With these new devices be diswvered the rotation of the sun about its axis, the moons of Jupiter, and the phases of the planet en&. These observations supported the proposition put forth by Copemicus nearly a ccntury earlier that the Earth moved about the Sun, but unfortunately contrad~ctcdthe prevailing, Earthcentered oicture of Ptolemv favored bv the Roman Cathollc Church a t that time. ~ h " eChurch authorities were not amused. Galileo was twice hauled before the Inauisition and silenced. Before being forced to recant his viiws supporting the Copernican system a t his second appearance in 1633 he argued (51, In these and other positions certainly no man doubts but His Holiness the Pope hath always an absolute power of admitting or condemning them: but it is not in the vower of anv creature to make them'to be true or falseor other& than oftheir own nature and in fact they are.
- ~
Nonetheless, he was forced to retract the heretical notion that the Earth (considered immovable in the Ptolemaic scheme) moved about the Sun.' Galileo was forced to do penance, later became blind (possibly as a lingering result of his solar observations), and died in 1642. Not until three and a half centuries later did the Church officially admit that it had been mistaken in silencing him. In 1840 the German Julius Robert Mayer signed on as ship's physician on the Jaua, a Dutch merchant vessel bound for the East Indies, a position that allowed him wnsiderable time for reading and speculation. Observing that the blood of sailors in the tropics was exceptionally red, he concluded that this color resulted because less energy, and hence less oxygen, was required to maintain body temperatures in the warm climate. After returning to Germany he carried out experiments using a horse to stir paper pulp, and in 1842 he not only obtained a crude value for the mechanical equivalent of heat. five vears ahead of Joule. but also put faith the first true statkment of the first la& of thermodmamics, five years before Helmholtz. Maver was. to be sure, not a fastidious writer, and he had a bad habit of confusing important terms such as force and energy (79).Partly because of this, his work was ignored and he saw others gain credit for concepts that he had earlier proposed. Lack of recognition and family problems drove him to attempt suicide, and he later was committed to mental institutions for a time. Eventually, however, because of the efforts of Helmholtz, Clausius, and Tyndall, Mayer's pioneering work was recognized. In his final years Mayer gained back some of his spirit and received numerous honors (10).
In 1874 Jawbus Henricus van't Hoff, then a 22-year-old Dutch graduate student, suggested that the element carbon might have a tetrahedral bonding arrangement in its compounds. (This idea was proposed independently by J. A. Le Be1 shortly afterward.) Van't Hoff's proposal nicely emlained the o ~ t i c a activities l of substances in solution. but it was attacited without mercy by the eminent organic chemist Hermam Kolbe, who called it "the outpourings of a childish fantasy" (11).(Indeed, Kolbe was a frequent critic of new ideas and may have been mentally ill a t the time of this attack (121.) Fortunately, vzn't Hoff withstood Kolbe's attack and continued his researches, later making key contributions to our understanding of electrolyte solutions and chemical dynamics (13).In 1901 he became the first Nobel laureate in chemistry. Dmitrii Mendeleev was not the fust to conceive of a periodic arraneement of the elements amordine to their atomic weights. Eoth Johan Dobereiner and A,-E. Beguyer de Chancourtois noted a t least Darts of this dewndence earlier, and in 1864 John A. R. ~ e w l a n d sa, ~iofessorat the City of London College, stated the relationship clearly before the English Chemical Society: "If the elements are arranged in the order of atomic weights, the eighth element, starting from a given one is a kind of repetition of the first, like the eighth note in a n octave of music." (The noble gases were not yet known.) Newlands was hooted down. One observer asked sarcastically if Newlands had thought of arranging the elements in alphabetical order (14). The Society refused to publish Newlands' paper. Understandably discouraged, Newlands did not further pursue the matter.' Mendeleev published his periodic table in 1869 and a revised version in 1871. He thus edged out the German chemist Julius Lothar Meyer, who independently published a n almost identical table in 1870. Mendeleev is justifiably given more credit for the discovery because he alone had the courage both to question the accuracy of some of the measured properties and to leave gaps in his table where still-to-be-discovered elements should fall (15).His fame grew as these predictions were verified. It is less well known that Mendeleev, in his later years, made other predictions that were less successful. When J. J. Thomson discovered the electron in 1897. Mendeleev rejected the idea because he regarded aton& as indivisible (16). He armed that the electron would "in time oecu~va position in-the history of our science similar to that iong ago accorded to phlogiston." Mendeleev also predicted the existence of two still-undiscovered elements, x and y, with atomic masses less than that of hydrogen-the molar mass of x was estimated a t between 104and 5 x 10-"gg, and that of y a t 0.4 g (17). Mendeleev, in addition, favored a nonbiological origin for petroleum (141, an idea recently revived by Thomas Gold (18). In the earlv 1880's Svante Arrhenius chose to investieate properties of electrolyte solutions for his doctoral wo& a t Uppsala University in Sweden. Scientists at the time were puzzled by salt solutions that seemed to have unusual properties. I n h i s dissertation presented i n 1884, Arrhenius proposed that solid electrolytes were transformed in solution into an "active form" that conducted electricity. (Later, in 1887, this process was identified more suecificallv as dissociation into ions.) His thesis examiners &ere not impressed. Arrhenius was awarded only a fourth class grade (non sine laude approbatur-approved not 21n 1887, aRer Mendeleev's sLccess. Newlands was belatedly recognlzea oy the Roya Soc ety and awarded the Davy medal 3 ~ a c also h later opposea !he lneory of re alwlty, saylng n 1913, '1 can accept the theory of relativity as little as I can accept the existence of atoms and other such dogmas" (90)
without praise) for the thesis and a third class grade (cum laude approbatur-approved with praise) for its defense, grades too low for a university appointment (19-21). (In defense of the examiners. it should be noted that the thesis was vague in parts, and evidence for some of its conclusions was weak (221.) Greatlv disheartened. Arrhenius sent copies of his the& to several leading ph$sical chemists of the time. The chemist Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald. then in Riga, Latvia, recognized the value of Arrhenius; work and even came to Stockholm to discuss i t with the young scientist. The two became friends and colleagues, later to be joined by van? Hoff in worluna w gain respect ~ for the theory. any prominent s c i e n ~ i s t sincluding Mendeleev and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), opposed the ionic hypothesis (13). However, the idea gradually gained acceptanceto the extent that in 1903 Arrhenius was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the proposal that had been so poorly thought of as a thesis two decades earlier. Few tales in the history of science are as poignant as that of the life--and d e a t h - o f the great Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. Boltzmann had, along with James Clerk Maxwell. laid the foundations of the science of statistical mechanics. Jacob Bronowski describes Boltzmam as "an irascible, extraordinary, difficult man, a n early follower of Darwin, quarrelsome and delightful, and everything that a human being should be" (23). But at the end of the 19th century Boltzmann was a central figure in a fierce intellectual debate about the reality of atoms. Two of the most powerful scientific figures of that time--0stwald and the philosopher Ernst Mach3-said that atoms were not real. Boltzmann said they were. The debate reached a climax a t a conference in Liibeck i n 1895. As Arnold Sommerfeld (24) described the clash between Boltzmam and Ostwald, it was
. . .the struggle of the bull with the supple matador. But this time the bull conquered the matador despite all his finesse. The arguments of Boltzmann drove through. All the young mathematicians stood on his side. A battle had been won, but not the war. Boltzmann, a moody man, troubled by depression and ill health, continued to argue for the reality of atoms (25). As Bronowski (19) continues: The ascent of man teetered on a fme intellectual balance at that point, because had anti-atomic doetrines then really won the day, our advance would certainly have been held hack by decades, and perhaps a hundred years. . . .Did Boltzmannjust argue? No. He lived and died that passion. In 1906, at the age of sixty-two,feelingisolated and defeated,at the very moment when atomic doctrine was going to win, he thought all was lost, and he mmmitted suicide. What remains to Commemorate him is his immortal formula cawed on his grave. S = k log W
If Bronowski o e r h a ~ underestimates s the inherent Dower of the at~mie'hy~oihesis, the importance of ~oltzmann's couraeeous defense of it in the context of the times cannot be decied. George E. Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit were graduate students in 1925 working with the physicist Paul Ehrenfest a t the Institute for Theoretical Phvsics in Leiden, the Netherlands. Upon reading wolfgang Pauli's Daoer introducine e . which the - the exclusion ~ r i n c.i ~.lin electron was proposed to be governed by four quantum numbers, it occurred to these young physicists that the mysterious fourth quantum number might be interpreted as arising from rotation of the electron about an internal axis. Excited but cautious, they took their idea to Ehrenfest, who commented that it was "either highly important or nonsense" t26,27). Ehrenfest suggested that the young Volume 71 Number 5 May 1994
393
researchers write a brief note on their theory and ask the famous physicist H. A. Lmentz, also a t Leiden, for his opinion. They did so, and within a week Lorentz sent them a carefully constructed mathematical analysis showing that the concept of a classical spinning electron contained a number of serious, possibly even fatal, problems. Apparently it was nonsense rather than important. Crestfallen, Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit returned to Ehrenfest to inform him that the paper should be held back. Ehrenfest, however, replied, "I have already sent off your note; you are both young enough to risk doing something stupid!" ("Ich habe I h r e n Brief schon liingst abgesandt; Sie s i n d beide j u n g genug um sich eine Dummheit leisten zu konnen!") The note was published in Die Naturwissenschaften in November, 1925 (28). Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli all initially rejected the idea. But first Bohr, and then Heisenberg, became convinced of its usefulness in the followine months. Bohr even expressed his approval in writing &hen Uhlenbeck and Gdudsmit published a follow-up note in 1926 (29). Finallv. in March. s i926, wen Puuli was won over when L. H. ~ h o m a showed that a troublinefactor-of-twoerror in the resultsofthe theory could be corrected (30). There is further irony to the story of electron spin. Unknown to Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit, the young American Ralph Kronig had previously-in January of 1925-also suggested that the electron possessed an intrinsic spin. Although the hypothesis succeeded in a qualitative sense, Kronig was unable to explain the aforementioned factor-oftwo error. Moreover. both Pauli and Heisenbere. with whom Kronig discusskd his idea, opposed the conceFt. As a consequence, Kronig decided to let the matter drop. Indeed, as early as 1921A. H. Compton in the United States stated a t the end of a paper on magnetic effects, 'May I then conclude that the electron itself, spinning like a tiny gyroscope, is probably the ultimate magnetic particle" (311. But Compton did not further extend hisidea to the all-important area of spectroscopy, where the fourth quantum number of Pauli was crucial. Albert Einstein had hisown wry comment on thesubject, remarking at the Sorbonne in 1929 (32): If my theory of relativity is proven correct, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.
Fate proved far harsher, of course, than Einstein could have anticipated. When the Nazis came to power in Germany they denounced Einstein's work as "Jewish science". In the words of Dr. Walter Gross, a n official spokesman for "Nordic Science", "The so-called theories of Einstein are merely the ravings of a mind polluted with liberal, democratic nonsense which is utterlv unacceptable to German i Philipp men of science" (33,. The physics ~ o b e laureate Lenard attacked the "mathematically botched-up theories of Einstein," and said "it is unworthy of a German to be the intellectual follower of a Jew" (341. (Interestingly, Lenard had earlier. in 1909. described Einstein as a 'deco and farreaching &inkerz (351.) In the Soviet Union the communists also denounced Einstein's work: "The theorv of a relativistic universe is the hostile work of the agents'bf fascism. It is t h e revoltine ~ r o ~ a e a n dofa a moribund. counter-revolutionary idioiog;" 6 6 ) . So much for thd world beating a path to one's door! New Ideas Max Planck, who ushered in the age Mquantum theory with his analvsis of black-bodv radiation, once commented (37)
394
Journal of Chemical Education
A new scientifictruth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Trulv new ideas are. bv their verv nature. radical departures from ksdom, and scientikts are, as ;hey should be. cautious in acce~tine - new theories and ideas. But admirable caution can cross over to sheer unwillingness to accept new and unfamiliar truths. Planck saw this lesson in his own experience. He had grappled with the mystery of black-body radiation for six years without success. Finallv. late in the vear 1900 he Hchieved a solution in what he termed an "a& of desperation" (38). On a stroll in aforest in the suburbs of Berlin he said to his son, "Today I have made n discov~ryas important as that of Newton". But the scientific world hardly beat a path to his door. Instead, his picture of radiation a b s o p tion and emission via discrete energy quanta was ignored largely for the next five years until an obscure junior patent examiner in Berne, Switzerland, Albert Einstein, picked up the idea and used it to explain the photoelectric effect. Einstein published his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1905, and one might imagine that i t took the scientific world by storm. On the contrary, most leading physicists, including the great H. A. Lorentz, opposed the idea that radiation itself was quantized (39).Even Max Planck, whose ideas were so crucial to Einstein's areuments. ooposed this extension (40). (There was reason to questik the new idea: the wave picture of light was ex~erimentallv well established, and a t the time 2 seemed ~mpossibletb believe t h a t anything could have both a wave a n d a corpuscular nature.) The mood is well illustrated in a letter sent by four leading physicists (Nemst, Planck, Ruhens, and Warburg) in 1913 in support of Einstein's election to the Pmssian Academy of Science. After praising Einstein's contnhutions in such areas as rclativit~andt h i theory of specific heats they note apulogeticully (391, A
That he may sometimes have missed the target in his speculations, as, for example, in his hypothesis of light quanta, cannot really be held too much against him, for it is not possible to intmduce fundamentallynew ideas, even in the most exact sciences, without oeeasionally taking a risk.
I t is ironic. then. that when Einstein was awarded the 1921 ~ o b e l ' k z in e Physics (actually given in 1922),it was for his work on the ~hotoelectriceffect. and his efforts in relativity were rega;ded as still awaitgg verification (41). Based in part on similarities in the outlines of the Americas, Europe, and Africa, the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener in 1915 proposed that these continents had once been joined together into a supercontinent that he called Pangaea (Greek for "all earth") and had subsequently drifted apart. Althouph this idea had a number of prece~ the first to muster substantial evdents ( 4 5 Wegener idence for it. When Weeener's book Die Entstehunr der Kontinente und Ozeane @he Origin of the continents and Oceans) (43) was translated into Endish in 1922, it "burst like a bombshell on incredulous ~ m e h c a n and s Hritishers" (421. Most uf his fellow scientists scoffed at the idea, regarding it as "Ein Mnrrhen, a pipe dream, a beautiful fairy story". The list of opponents included such notable authorSimoson. ities as Sir Harold Jeffrevs and Ceoree Gavlord " Papers supporting Wegener's ideas were routinely "reiected bv referees and editors with snide comments" (42). " h e n wegener died in a blizzard in Greenland in 1'930, still attemptine to earner eeoloeic evidence in s u ~ ~ oofr t his theory,'he was a n "intefiectuil outcast'' (44).P$ late as 1959 a leading geology text referred to the idea of continental drift as "speculative", adding that "Though the theory
-
- -
is a brilliant tour-de-force, its support does not seem substantial" (45). I t took half a century for Wegener's ideas to become accepted (46h4Wegener's contribution to geology has been compared to those of Copernicus in astronomy, Darwin in biolom and Einstein in phvsics (47). Todav the ideas of cont&&al drift and piate tectonics stemming from Wegener's theory are considered fundamental tenets of geology and are so accepted by the general public (in so far as the general public follows scientific arguments) that television news anchors cite their principles to explain earthquakes. The Austrian monk Gregor Mendel determined the basic laws of genetics in the 1860's, but his work (albeit published in a n obscure iournal) attracted no interest a t the time, perhaps because reading i t required knowledge of both botanv and mathematics (48).In 1900, 16 years aRer his death, iflendel's work was rediscovered by chance. I n the first half of this century identification of the chemical nature of the gene was one of the scientific world's greatest challenges. Althoughdcoxyribonucleicacid(DNA~ had been detected in the cell nucleus as early as 1869, it was generally helieved that chromosomal protein was the information-carrvine ~ubstance(49). In 1944 Oswald Avery, Colin ~akeoYd,and ~ a c l y hMccarty, working on bacterial transformation. ~ m v e dthat DNAwas the genetic material (50). This discovery is now recognized a s milestone in the development of modem biology, but it cannot be said that it set the scientific world on fire a t the time. Six years later, in a goldenjubilee symposium on *Genetics in the 20th Century", only one of 26 eminent geneticists even mentioned Avery's work. That scientist, a colleague of Avery's a t the Rockefeller Institute, questioned whether the DNA had been purified properly (49). Only pivotal discoveries made during the following three years turned the tide. The deciuherine of the structure of DNA in 1953 bv &d Francis H. C. Crick (51) was clear6 James D. one of the ereatest scientific achievements of this centurv. " Yet, as ~ r i z recalls k (521, not everyone was impressed:
a
ats son
[Mlost people of course feel that. . .the whole world stood up and cheered and everybody started working on it, and the whole scientific community was convinced. Not a bit of it, not a bit of it! Although geneticists for the most part reacted favorably, a number of influential biochemists did not like the uroposal. Erwin Chargaff a t Columbia, for example, regaided it as "a lot of nonsense". (In 1950 Chargaff had made the key discovery that the base pair ratios A:T and G:C in DNA were equal to unity.) Crick continues, "It was perfectly clear to Jim and I that we had to get involved with biochemists, but i t wasn't clear to the biochemists that they had to get involved with us." Nonetheless, as Crick admits, "All in all it seems to me that we got a very fair hearing, better than Avery and certainly a lot better than Mendel" (53). After hearing Wolfgang Pauli lecture on a new theory of elementary particles Niels Bohr once remarked (54). We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough. 4Wegener also was involved in the controvery over whether the craters on the moon were caused by meteoric impacts or volcanic eruptions. In this case he had better luck. By clever experiments involving the impact of plaster on powdered cement he contributed impoiiant suppolt for the meteoric theoly.
It is clear that often "crazy ideas" are needed to answer mysteries in science, and that the bigger the mysteries the crazier the ideas must often be. Future Prospects The movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn once remarked, "Never make forecasts, especially about the future" (55). This is good advice. Perhaps in no other area have "the expertsn-had a poorer record than in predicting the future courses of new technolwies. Eamomist John Kenneth Galbraith has noted, here are two classes of forecasters: Those who don't know-and those who don't know that they don't know" (56). Uuon hearine of Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone i i 1875 the chief engineer of the British Post Officeis said tn have sniffed. "The Americans have need of one -but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys" (57). . . President Rutherford B. Haves remarked. "That's an amazing invention, hut who would ever want to use one of them?" (2). The Western Union Telegraph Company turned down a chance to purchase the patent rights to the tele~hone.its president calling the device "an electrical t the most notorious comment of all in toy(2). ~ bp&haps this field is attributed to Charles H. Duell, Director of the U. S. Patent Office, who said in 1899, "Everything that can be invented has been invented" (2). Today the internal combustion engine is king of the road, but a t the turn of this century three types of cars competed for the American m a r k e e s t e a m cars, electric cars, and internal combustion vehicles (58). Steam-driven autos were the most popular, and electric cars were a close second. The urosuects for internal combustion emines did not look goodat ail: "MOUcan't get people to sit over an explosion" was the evaluation of one manufacturer. As late as 1914 the celebrated inventor Charles Steinmetz predicted that a million electric cars would plv America's roads. Yet within just a few years internal cckbustion vehicles were the overwhelming victors. Steam engines took too long to w a r n up. Electric vehicles suffered the disadvantages of low speed and poor acceleration, and despite advice from Thomas Edison that they should cater to this new market, electric utilities failed to respond by setting up convenient recharging stations. Internal combustion cars, despite the doubters, won the day. Many people doubted that man would ever fly. About 1895 the meat Lord Kelvin. then president of the Roval Society,declared " ~ e a v i e than r air flying machines arc imuossible"~2~. Wilbur Wrirrht said as late as 1901 that "Man kill not fly for fiRy yea&" (2). Yet he and Orville flew in two. In the early days of radio i t was clear that the broadcasting spectrum was becoming crowded, and static caused by atmospheric disturbances was a major problem. Many hoped that the new frequency modulation (FM) method, largely pioneered by Edwin H. Amwtrong a t Columbia Universitv. would urovide a narrow-bandwidth and staticfree altegative ti the prevailing amplitude modulation (AM) method (59). However, in 1922 this idea was dealt a stunning blow when John R. Carson, a brilliant mathematician a t AT&T's Bell Laboratories. published an elegant and still classic analysis proving that the bandwid& requirement for FM transmission was actually greater than that for AM (60). Carson concluded, "It is proved that the frequency modulation system. . . is inferior to the amplitude variation system both as to the width of the frequency band occupied and a s to distortion of simal wave form." The second part of Carsonk statement was incorrect, but under Carson's influence most investigators were discouraged from pursuing further development of FM transmission.
-
Volume 71 Number 5 May 1994
395
Carson continued to attack the FM method and other attempts to eliminate static. At a meeting of the Institute of Radio Eneineers in 1928 he armed that "we are forced to the concl&ion that static, like &e poor, will always be with us" (61). Almost alone, Armstrong refused to accept Carson's mathematical arguments and-like a Captain Ahab pursuing his great white whale--worked to vindicate t h e FM method. I n the early 1930's he was able to demonstrate t h a t wide-band FM transmissions were largely free from atmospheric distortions. The battle was not over, however, since the radio broadcasting industry, in order to protect its huge investments in the AM system, fought fiercely to suppress the FM method. Later, when the scientific evidence for FM became overwhelming, the same industry adopted Armstrong's ideas but refused to pay him royalties, forcing Armstrong into lengthy and expensive legal battles. I n 1954, exhausted and impoverished, Armstrong took his own life (59, 61). Few ideas have received so hostile a reception as the notion of obtaining energy from nuclear reactions. Robert Millikan, a Nobel laureate in physics, said in 1923, 'There is no likelihood that man can ever tap the power of the atom" (2). The great Ernest Rutherford, who had discovered the nucleus and carried out the first artificial nuclear reaction, stated in 1933 that "The energy produced by the breakincr down of the atom is a verv ~ o o kind r of thine. ~ n ~ o n e k expects ho a source of p o ~ & f r o mthe transfoFmation of these atoms is talking moonshine" (2). Einstein asserted in 1932 that 'There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear] energy will ever be obtainable" (2). (It is ironic t h a t i n 19% Einstein-at the urging of Leo Szilard-sent his famous letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, asking the president to initiate a secret program to develop an atomic bomb.) In October 1942, one finds in ScientificAmerican The business of smashing atoms to release great gusts of energy is a profitable sport-for news reporters. But it is not an item that has much standina in scientific laboratories. . . . As far as artificial disintegrations are concerned, the verdict thus far seems to be definitelv thumbs down on such ooerations for giving a net yield of energy. Far more energy has to be put into the operation than can he gat out.
-.
When Chester Carlson invented the nhotoco~vinenmcess that we now call xerography in 193f the world did not beat a path to his door. On the contrary, he beat a path to the doors of industry, only to be rejected time and time again. More than 20 companies, including RCA, GE, and IBM, turned him down (62). Finally, in 1944 he attracted the interest of the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio. By 1946 Battelle found that the development costs for the device were too high to bear alone and enlisted the support of the tiny ~ a l o i zCompany from Rochester, New York. Haloid marketed its first xerom-aphic copier in 1949, but i t was not until 1960 that its f;st &uly siccessful copier was produced. In 1961 the company became the Xerox Corporation. Carlson received royalties on his invention and became a wealthy man; rememberingthe poverty of his childhood, he gave millions to research and various charities. Computers have had expert doubters since their very beginning. Charles Babbage conceived a mechanical wmputing machine in the 1840's for the purpose of computing accurate mathematical tables. He received early for . support .. the project from the British government, but this support was stopped alter Sir George Hidell Airy, the Astrunomer Royal oV(:reat Hritain, called the project "worthless" r63~." A .
'Babbage's "Difference Engine No. 2",a three-ton device with 4000 parts, finally was constructed to honor the 200th anniversary of his birth (64).
396
Journal of Chemical Education
In 1943 Thomas J. Watson. the Chairman of IBM (then a "business machine" company), is supposed to have said "I think there is a world market for about five computers" (65). Other expert estimates of the potential market ranged fmm about six to two dozen machines. This tiny demand was hardly worth the trouble for a business enterprise, and when John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, Jr., who had developed the seminal ENIAC computer a t the University of Pennsylvania, tried to launch a commercial computer enterprise in the late 1940's they were generally rebuffed. In 1977 Kenneth Olsen, founder and then president of Digital Equipment Corporation, made the comment that "There is no reason for any individual to have a com~uterin their home" (2).Grammar aside. the statement i i d not augur well ~ O ~ D E C ' Sfuture in the PC market. Todav more than 30 million ~ e r s o n a com~nters l are found in h e n c a b homes (66,, and about 150 million PC's are in use worldwide in homes and offices. Predictions about the future potentials of individuals are just as chancy. "You'll never amount to anything, Einstein", were the words one rebellious student heard from h i s teacher a t t h e Munich Gymnasium (67). Charles Darwin's father told him "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family," and his early teachers thought him a slow learner (68). Young Louis Pasteur was judged to be "mediocre" in chemistry (69). Thomas Edison's early childhood hardly indicated that he would be successful. Edison was born in the small town of Milan (pronounced MY-lin), Ohio in 1847 and lived there until he was seven. His neighbors thought him strange. an to opinion surely strengthened when, a t age six, he set the family barn Tust to see what it would do" (70).To teach his son a lesson, Edison's father Sam punished him on the village square for all to see. Edison's teacher described him as "addled". Finally, Edison's mother took the young man out of school and taught him herself. (Edison commented later that "My mother was the making of me. She understood me; she let me follow my bent.") Thomas Edison went on to become the most famous inventor of all time and had a record 1093 patents to his credit when he died in 1931 (71). . . 'What all the wise men ~romisedhas not hamened. and what all the damn fools {redicted has come &bass,'; was the wav Queen Victoria's first orime minister. Lord Melbourne: summed it up (72). cle&lY the expertshted above would have done well to have taken the homespun advice of Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw, 181F-1885). "Don't never prophesy, for if you prophesy wrong, nobody will forget it, and if you prophesy right, nobody will remember it". I t is especially dangerous to announce that something can't be done. The future is a very long time, and in the words of no less an authority than Yogi Berra, "It ain't over till it's over". Conclusions Manv further exam~lescould. of course. be cited. I t is evident that virtually every maj& scientific'and technological advance has had its detractors and opponents and that expert opinion is a far from perfect guide. Should one then s i m.~" lv not listen to criticism? Of course not. What should we tell our students? I offer the following suggestions: Expect criticism New ideas and inventions normally meet resistance and skepticism. Indeed, the give and take of criticism and discussion play a n important,role in the scientific process, providing a self-correction mechanism.
Many ideas are debatable, and some may take a long time to resolve (cf. Yogi Berra). For instance, arguments over the interpretation-of quantum theory continue to this day, despite the predominance of the Topenhagen interret tat ion" as a standard model (731. (This model holds that bnly probabilities of atomic events can be ultimately known and emohasizes the role of measurements in fixine reality.) The opposing position, maintained by Einstein until his death in 1955, was that "God doesn't throw dice". Although critical experiments (74, 75) have supported the standard model, Einstein's position has continued to have knowledgeable proponents (76,771 whose ideas cannot be cavalierly dismissed (73, 78-79).
ing. He had the courage to predict the positions of the undiscovered elements. Einstein said that light could behave like an energy bundle, despite the well-'stablished wave theory of light. Niels Bohr, in his original analysis of the hydrogen atom, simply asserted that the orbits of the electron in hydrogen were restricted. He did not explain this further, nor did he explain why the electron did not simply spiral into the nucleus as classical laws demanded. Wegener didn't explain the mysterious forces that drove the continental plates to drift across the Earth's surface (although he would have liked to); he "merely" cited evidence that this phenomenon had occurred. In all of these cases time later supplied a deeper understanding.
Evaluate the criticism Criticism can be beneficial. Some things are, after all, just plain wrong. It is best to be done with them quickly and to go on to more promising pursuits. The astronomer Percival Lowell's observation of "canals" on Mars was wrong. The "discovery" of polywater by Nikolai Fedyakin and Boris Dejaguin was wmng (80). And many, possibly most, scientists would say that "cold fusion" is also wrong (81.82). although the idea still has adherents. 1; other cases criticism can alert us to flaws and weak spots in our ideas. It can force us to refine and improve them. Remember, however, that some criticisms, even those from resoected authorities, are invalid. Criticisms based on ad horninern or predjudicial grounds can be dismissed immediately. Other criticisms, even if well intentioned, may simply-be inaccurate. Responding to claims that success depends on luck, Tom Peters, the coauthor of I n Search of Excellence, has proposed 50 strategies for "getting lucky" (83). Strategy number 20 is
l h t y o u r theory or invention Theoretical arguments about why something will not work are inherently incomplete. For one thing, the theory may be either wrong or inappropriate. Recall, for instance, that i t was precisely the failure of classical theories that led to the necessity of introducing quantum theory (for small objects) and relativity (for fasbmoving and massive objects). Recall also the theoretical arguments that were hurled a t FM radio, purportedly showing that it was useless. In 1868 Lord Kelvin mustered a series of physical and mathematical arguments that apparently demonstrated conclusively that the age of the Earth was about 100 million years (Darwin had estimated 500 million years). He was backed up by no less than Hermann von Helmholtz, the great German physicist. As S. W. Carey reports (42),
-
Listen to everyone. Ideas come from everywhere.
In fairness, it must be pointed out that strategy number 21 is Don't listen to anyone. Trust your inner ear. Both are good advice. Beware the Pygmalion complex In Greek legend Pygmalion, a king of Cyprus, fell in love with Galatea, a beautiful ivory statue of a young woman that he himself had created. Things worked out well for Pygmalion because the goddess Aphmdite brought Galatea to life and the two married, etc., etc. But falling in love with one's own creation can be bad for a scientist, blinding him or her tn the creation's shortcomings. One needs &: thusiasm, but also one needs some d e r e e of perspective. If your creation has fatal flaws, let it go down in flames without you. eme ember that you don't need to explain everything. Some of the available information out there is wrong, and certain details may require time to explain. Mendeleev suggested that some experimental numbers for the elements were wmng and that several elements were miss6Ernest Rutnedord recal eo an address ne gave in 1904 to the Royal InstilLtton of London (91) in thefo owmg way: I came into the room, which was half dark;and presently spotted Lord Kelvin in the audience and realized I was in trouble at the last Dart of mv SDeech dealina with the aae of the Earth. where mv hews coiflicied with his. 6 mv relief ~ i l v i nfell fast asieeo. but a; I came to the mponanl p a n t , I saw tne old Dlrd sll ~p ana cock a balefLl glance a1 me' Tnen a suooen msp~rat~on came, and I satd Lord Kelv n ha0 I mflea the age of tne Eanh provrded no new source was discovered. That prophetic utterance refers to what we are considering tonight, radium! Behold! The old boy beamed upon me.
Most geologists wilted before the physicist's heat and tried to land1. a aceommadate their theorv to Kelvin's autharitv. . . . . procession of geologists rekxamined the data ani found that, of course, the age of the earth was 100 million yean. Fortunately, not everyone was cowed. Thomas Henry Huxley, for example, demurred, saying, Mathematics may he compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff of any degree of fineness; but. nevertheless. what vou eet out de~endsuoon what vou . out in; Ad as the grandest mill ?n the worid will nit extractwheatflour from peascod, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.
.
Both Kelvin and Helmholtz had erroneously assumed that the source of the sun's energy was contraction under gravitv. The later discoveries of nuclear decav and nuclear reactions in the sun completely overturnedAthelrreasoning!' The oresentlv acceoted estimate of the aee of thc earth is 4.6 dillion years. Part of the attraction of science for many of us is that i t is not authoritarian-experiments, not experts or theories, are the final arbiter of truth. (An excellent discussion of "high inference" experiments has been given by J. R. Platt (84).) As we have seen, even the best of scientists have made a few bad calls. If you test your idea and it doesn't work, you can ~roudlvr e ~ o rthat t vou have eathered still furthe; suppoA for the prevailing-theory. ~ u iftyou test your theory and it does work-then you've reallv cot something! ~
~~~~~~
~~
-
A
DonZ excessively fear failure Antoine Lavoisier's caloric theory of heat (picturing heat as a fluid) was a failure. J. J. Thomson's "plum pudding" model of the atom was a failure. Linus Pauling's model of DNKs structure was wrong (much to the delight ofWatson and Crick) (85). Do we think less of these great men because of such "failures"? Not a t all! Proposing models is a key part of the scientific enterprise. Incorrect models often stimulate thoughtful discussiags and definitive experiments. Volume 71 Number 5 Mav 1994
397
74. 75. 76. 77. 78.
A s p 4 . A . ; Granger, P.;Roger, G P h y a Re". LpU. I982,49.91. As@,A.: Delibsrd, J.: Roger, G. Phys. Re". LplL 1982,49,1804. Jammer, M. ThePhilmophy ofQuonfumMeehmies: Wiky: New York. 1974. Penmae. R. CXEMTECH 1982.22(1),pp 28-31, Baggoh, The MennmWofQuontum Thm: Oldord Univendty NewYork, 3
83. 84. 85. 86. 87.
La"".
79. Horgan, J. Sci. Amer July 1992, pp 94-104. 80. Franks, F Polpater: MITResa: Cambridge,MA, 1981. 81. Huiranga. J. R. Cold Fusion: The Selpntific FrOaeroae aflhe Century: Univ Rochester R e s : Roeheater, NY,1992. 82. Tmbes, G. B d S & m : Tha Shoe Life and w e i d n m of CaldFuaion; Random Houae: New Yark, 1993.
88. 89. 90. 91.
Peters, T CHEMTECH 1995,23(11, pp 10-11. Plstt, J.R. Sclenn 1964,146,347353. Watson, J. D. ThoDovbkHelu; Atheneum:NevYark, 1968: Chapter22. The Baaeball Encyclopedia, 8th ed., M a d a n : New Ymk, 1990. Mesemle, M., Ed. Tho 19- I n f i m f i i iP k k k A l m a n ~ lH~ughtoto ; Mifflii: R ~ ~ t o t o , 1993. Nayak, P. R.: Ketteringham, J M . Bnokthmughs; Ramon Aeaaiatea: New York, 1986: p 19. Frane, J. E. CHEMTECH 1890,20(31,133-135. Pile, 5. T h e B d ofHerole Failures; hutledge Q Ksgan Paul: London, 1979. Wilson, D. Rufherfod:Simpk Genius; M. I. T. Ress: Cambridge, MA. 1983.
Volume 71 Number 5
May 1994
399
