Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe

by Livio, Mario

  “The detailed mechanism by means”: Pauling 1948b.

  Levene managed to distinguish: eg, Levene and Bass 1931. Olby 1974, p. 73–96 gives a good description of the early work.

  “The nucleic acids of the nucleus”: Wilson 1925.

  most geneticists still believed: This notion, known as the “protein paradigm,” is described, eg, in Kay 1993.

  Avery and his colleagues: Avery, MacLeod, and McCarty 1944.

  “So there’s the story”: The letter was written on May 13, 1943. It is part of “The Oswald T. Avery Collection,” on the web under Profiles in Science: National Library of Medicine, at http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/ResourceMetadata/CCBDVF.

  did not get the attention they deserved: The fact that the paper was published in 1944, during the war, may have also contributed to its relatively low impact.

  “To my father, nucleic acids”: P. Pauling 1973.

  an unusual paper by biochemist: Ronwin 1951.

  “in formulating a hypothetical structure”: Pauling and Schomaker 1952a.

  Ronwin retorted by pointing out: He wrote to Pauling and directed him to a paper published by chemist Ludwig Anschütz in 1927, in which the latter suggested that phosphorus connected to five oxygen atoms in some structures.

  Pauling and Schomaker had to withdraw: Pauling and Schomaker 1952b.

  Pauling heard that Maurice Wilkins: Biochemist Gerald Oster wrote to Pauling about it on August 9, 1951. Oster interpreted Wilkins’s delay in publishing the images as a lack of interest on his part, but Wilkins was, in fact, working toward confirming the results with better tools.

  Three separate events, all happening in 1951: Although there are, of course, many accounts of the discovery of the structure of DNA, the autobiographical ones remain of special value, controversies notwithstanding. Watson 1980 (Norton Critical Edition) is particularly recommended. It includes, in addition to Watson’s original (and controversial) text, an excellent selection of reviews and analyses. Also highly recommended are Crick 1988 and Wilkins 2003. Unfortunately, Rosalind Franklin did not live long enough to write her own autobiography, but two biographies—Sayre 1975 and Maddox 2002—fill that gap beautifully. Most recently, Franklin’s sister, Jenifer Glynn, has written a wonderful memoir (Glynn 2012). Another interesting perspective on Franklin’s experiences as a woman in a male-dominated lab is Des Jardins 2010, pp. 180–95.

  “molecular work on DNA in England”: Watson 1980, p. 13.

  “This means that as far as the experimental”: Randall wrote to Franklin on December 4, 1950. He added: “I am not in this way suggesting that we should give up all thought of work on solutions, but we do feel that the work on fibres would be more immediately profitable and, perhaps, fundamental.” The letter is reproduced, eg, in Olby 1974, p. 346, and in Maddox 2002, p. 114. See also Klug 1968a, b.

  “no doubt the brightest person”: Watson 1951, cited in Olby 1974, p. 354.

  “The interest was that his [Watson’s] background”: Olby 1974, p. 310.

  “I have never seen Francis Crick”: Watson 1980, p. 9.

  “Jim was distinctly more outspoken”: Crick 1988, p. 64.

  “If either of us suggested”: Crick 1988, p. 70.

  “was determined to discover”: Crick 1988, p. 64.

  “it would not be fair to them”: John Randall wrote to Pauling on August 28, 1951. He started by explaining that contrary to Gerald Oster’s interpretation, Wilkins was very interested in the DNA work: “I am sorry that Oster is rather misinformed about our intentions with regard to nucleic acid. Wilkins and others are busily engaged in working out the interpretation of the desoxyribosenucleic acid x-ray photographs.” Pauling responded politely on September 25, 1951, saying that he was sorry for having troubled Randall. All the relevant documents are on the Oregon State University website.

  “One, thirty-five years old”: Chargaff 1978, p. 101.

  “So far as I could make out”: Chargaff 1978, p. 101. Chargaff added (p. 102): “I told them all I knew. If they had heard before about pairing rules, they concealed it.”

  “You would be eccentric”: Crick in a recorded interview with Robert Olby; Olby 1974, p. 294.

  he and Crick produced their first model: A draft describing their approach was written by Crick (Olby 1974, p. 357). Crick states clearly in the draft that his first model with Watson was “stimulated by the results presented by the workers at King’s College, London, at a colloquium given on 21st November 1951.” He also refers explicitly to Pauling’s alpha-helix model.

  the reported water content was completely wrong: Franklin found eight molecules per nucleotide, while Watson reported four molecules per lattice point.

  discovered some long-lost correspondence of Francis Crick: Gann and Witkowski 2010.

  “I am afraid the average vote”: Gann and Witkowski 2010.

  “we’ve all agreed that we must come”: Gann and Witkowski 2010.

  she discovered that DNA occurred: An excellent description of Franklin’s work can be found in Klug 1968a, with some clarifications in Klug 1968b and additional information in Klug 1974. Elkin 2003 presents a historical perspective, and Braun, Tierney, and Schmitzer 2011 give a pedagogical explanation of the technical work.

  she absolutely refused to assume: According to Klug 1968a, Franklin’s antihelical attitude around May 1952 resulted from her uncertainty about the survivability of the helical structure in the A form of DNA. Her general reluctance to assume anything about the structure is reflected in her statement “No attempt will be made to introduce hypotheses concerning details of structure at the present stage” (Franklin and Gosling 1953a).

  “He [Watson] just wanted the answer”: Crick 1988, p. 69.

  Elwyn Beighton in Astbury’s lab: Beighton’s 1951 photograph of DNA is in the Special Collections, Astbury Papers, C7, at the University of Leeds. The photographs can be seen online at www.leeds.ac.uk/heritage/Astbury/Beighton_photo/index.html.

  Ruth B. Shipley, head of the Passport: The entire episode is described in detail in Hager 1995, pp. 400–407. The general anticommunist atmosphere at the time is hauntingly depicted, eg, in Coute 1978.

  he immediately sent a letter to President: Pauling wrote to Harry Truman on February 29, 1952.

  Pauling’s passport trials and tribulations: The New York Times ran a few stories and later discussed the whole passport system in relation to Pauling’s problems on May 19, 1952, in an article entitled “Dr. Pauling’s Predicament.” The Washington Post wrote on May 13, 1952, “Pauling, Noted Chemist, Refused Passport,” and Chicago’s Daily Sun-Times ran on May 14, 1952, an article entitled “America’s Own Iron Curtain.”

  in the words of biologist Alex Rich: Interview with the author on November 15, 2010.

  in that paper, published in 1950: Chargaff 1950, and also Chargaff, Zamenhof, and Green 1950.

  Hershey and his collaborator, Martha Chase: Hershey and Chase 1952.

  Williams showed amazingly detailed: Williams 1952.

  the density measurements of Astbury and Bell: An example of a diffraction photograph from DNA fibers obtained by Florence Bell in Astbury’s lab can be seen in the University of Leeds’ online collection at www.leeds.ac.uk/heritage/Astbury/Bell_Thesis/index.html; the published papers were Astbury and Bell 1938, and Astbury and Bell 1939.

  “The cylindrical molecule is formed”: Pauling and Corey 1953.

  “Because of their varied nature”: Pauling and Corey 1953.

  Pauling even had a small group: Judson (1996, p. 131) heard about this meeting from a scientist who had worked at Caltech that winter. Pauling was apparently attempting to cheer himself up, given his political problems at the time.

  “We have, we believe, discovered”: Pauling’s letter to Alexander Todd is on the Oregon State University website at http://osulibrary.orst.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna/corr/sci9.001.16-1p-todd-19521219.html.

  sent on the same day to Henry Allen Moe: This letter is also on the Oregon State University websi
te at http://osulibrary.orst.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna/corr/sci14.014.7-lp-moe-19521219.html.

  “To my left, near the window”: P. Pauling, 1973.

  “I was told a story today”: Letter from Peter Pauling to Linus, Ava Helen, and Crellin Pauling, Peter’s brother. At http://osulibrary.orst.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna/corr/bio5.041.6-peterpauling-paulings-19530113.html.

  “I wish Jim Watson were here”: Letter from Peter Pauling to Linus and Ava Helen Pauling. The transcript on the website reads mistakenly, “I am in direct manner,” when it should be (see original) “in an indirect manner.” At http://osulibrary.orst.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna/corr/bio5.041.6-peterpauling-lp-19530123.html.

  Chapter 7: Whose DNA Is It Anyway?

  Watson rushed to Cambridge chemist: Described in Watson 1980, p. 94.

  They went to celebrate at the Eagle: Watson 1980, p. 95. Watson wrote, “Instead of sherry, I let Francis buy me a whiskey.”

  “Pauling just didn’t try”: Wilkins added, “He can’t have looked closely at the details of what they did publish on base pairing, in that paper; almost all the details are simply wrong.” Cited in Judson 1996, p. 80. Pauling himself admitted to Judson (1996, p. 135), “We weren’t working very hard on it.”

  Clearly, this principle of self-complementarity: Pauling himself mentioned this point in his second Hitchcock Foundation Lecture, “Chemical Bonds in Biology,” given at the University of California at Berkeley, on January 17, 1983.

  When I talked to Alex Rich and Jack Dunitz: I talked to Alex Rich on November 15, 2010, and to Jack Dunitz on November 23, 2010.

  Peter explained further that: P. Pauling, 1973.

  Everyone engages in inductive reasoning: In a series of seminal papers, Kahneman and Tversky discuss this topic in detail. See, eg, Kahneman and Tversky 1973, 1982. Also Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky 1982, and Cosmides and Tooby 1996. An excellent popular account is Kahneman 2011. Schulz 2010, pp. 115–32, discusses beautifully some aspects of inductive reasoning in relation to being wrong.

  “We can’t live in a state”: Interview to New Scientist; Else 2011.

  He decided to gamble: Lehrer 2009 gives a detailed description of the decision process.

  cognitive bias known as the framing effect: Kahneman 2011, pp. 363–74, gives many illuminating examples. Interestingly, fMRI studies show that the emotional responses in the amygdala (the brain region associated with negative feelings) in people who realize that “90 percent lean” is identical to “10 percent fat” are very similar to those in people who are actually affected by the negative frame. The differences arise in the prefrontal cortex, which controls the emotions by thinking rationally about them. See, eg, de Martino et al. 2006.

  “Biologists probably consider”: Letter from Linus Pauling to Henry Allen Moe, on December 19, 1952. At http://osulibrary.orst.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna;shcorr/sci14.014.7-lp-moe-19521219.html.

  “If that was such an important”: This comment by Ava Helen was repeated by Pauling many times. See, eg, Hager 1995, p. 431.

  “The proposed structure accordingly permits”: Pauling and Corey 1953, p. 96. This was an important point, since it shows that Pauling did relate the structure to information carrying capacity. Pauling and Corey also referred to the issue of amino acid sequencing, noting that in terms of the dimensions involved, nucleic acids are “well-suited to the ordering of amino-acid residues in a protein.” This point was clearly made by Matt Meselson in his talk about Pauling. At http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/events/1995/paulingconference/video-s3-2-meselson.html.

  “I am just putting the final touches”: Letter from Linus Pauling to Peter Pauling on March 27, 1953. At http://osulibrary.orst.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna/corr/sci9.001.33-lp-peterpauling19530327.html.

  Extensive studies by Swedish researchers: In the context of the Betula Project (a research project on human memory), psychologist Lars-Göran Nilsson and his colleagues gave many memory tests to people in the age range thirty-five to eighty, and repeated tests at one-year intervals. The project started in 1988, and the researchers studied a total of 4,200 individuals. A collection of articles describing many of the results is Bäckman and Nyberg 2010.

  I asked molecular biologist: Conversation on April 18, 2011. Jack Szostak, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, whom I also asked about Pauling’s chemistry failure, also suggested that Pauling might have thought that he would find a way for the structure to work from a chemical perspective.

  “We have also been stimulated”: Watson and Crick 1953a.

  The dark cross was the unmistakable: Moreover, the spacing between successive dark spots indicates the distance covered by a complete turn of the helix (found to be 34 angstroms), and the distance between the center of the X shape (figure 14) to the top indicates the distance between successive bases.

  his “mouth fell open”: Watson 1980, p. 98.

  Jerry Donohue came to the rescue: At the time, there were uncertainties concerning the precise location of the hydrogen atoms in the bases. (There were different so-called tautomeric forms.) Donohue was an expert on the subject, eventually publishing important works in 1952 and 1955. His contribution to the successful DNA model was crucial.

  From the symmetry of the crystalline DNA: In crystallography, symmetry (with respect to transformations such as rotation and reflection) is used to characterize the crystals. From the information in the report, Crick was able to deduce that the crystalline form of DNA could be described by what crystallographers call the “monoclinic C2” space group. This, in turn, implied that the chains were antiparallel. In an interview with Robert Olby, Crick admitted, “I don’t think I would have thought of running them in the other direction” (Olby 1974, p. 404).

  “I enclose a draft of our letter”: Gann and Witkowski 2010.

  “If Rosy wants to see Pauling”: Letter of Wilkins to Crick, probably on March 23. Gann and Witkowski 2010.

  the landmark paper by Watson and Crick: Watson and Crick 1953a.

  The details were presented in a second paper: Watson and Crick 1953b.

  Crick explained later that this: Crick 1988, p. 66.

  One was by Wilkins, Alexander Stokes, and Herbert Wilson: Wilkins, Stokes, and Wilson 1953.

  The third paper in the April 25: Franklin and Gosling 1953a. They published another paper in July of the same year, in which they detailed the distinction between the DNA A and B structures; Franklin and Gosling 1953b. See also Franklin and Gosling 1953c.

  became the title of a successful play: For a review of the play Photograph 51, see, eg, http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/theater/06photograph.html.

  “It might be good for you”: Letter from Linus Pauling to Peter Pauling on March 27, 1953. At http://osulibrary.orst.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna/corr/sci9.001.33-lp-peterpauling-19530327.html.

  “Although it is only two months”: Pauling and Bragg 1953.

  “Failure hovers uncomfortably close”: Watson 2000.

  The new view that emerges: See, eg, Reich et al. 2011, and interesting discussions on the blog page of paleoanthropologist John Hawks, john hawks weblog.

  Gamow was shown a copy: Gamow’s involvement and his coding schemes are described in detail, eg, in Judson 1996. Gamow also founded the RNA Tie Club, an organization that aspired, according to Gamow, “to solve the riddle of RNA structure, and to understand the way it builds proteins.”

  Chapter 8: B for Big Bang

  “We now come to the question”: The entire event is described in detail in Mitton 2005, pp. 127–29. The program was announced in Britain’s Radio Times magazine, March 28, 1949.

  The name has even survived: Ferris 1993.

  Fred Hoyle was born: Two excellent biographies of Hoyle are Mitton 2005 and Gregory 2005. Hoyle 1994 is a fascinating autobiography, as is the earlier and shorter Hoyle 1986a. Information can be found also through the Sir Fred Hoyle Project of St. John’s College at the Univer
sity of Cambridge. Online at www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/hoyle/project/#collection.

  “Between the ages of five”: Hoyle 1994, p. 42.

  In 1939 he decided to forego: Hoyle wrote, “I discovered the Inland Revenue [the British equivalent of the IRS] distinguished between students and nonstudents by whether or not you had acquired the Ph.D.”; Hoyle 1994, p. 127.

  “To achieve anything really worthwhile”: Hoyle 1994, p. 235. Hoyle added: “To hold popular opinion is cheap, costing nothing in reputation.”

  “In 1926 it was possible”: Hoyle 1986b, p. 446.

  Dmitry Mendeleyev, a Russian chemist: A number of other chemists came up with their own versions of the periodic table. The list included the French mineralogist Alexandre-Émile Béguyer de Chancourtois, John Newlands in England, and, in particular, Julius Lothar Meyer in Germany, who contributed similar tables (following some pioneering work by Robert Bunsen). Mendeleyev was the person, however, who managed to insert all sixty-two known elements into the table, and to not only predict elements awaiting discovery but also to even anticipate their densities and atomic weights. For a fascinating read on the periodic table, see Kean 2010.

  the smallest reproduction of the periodic table: You can watch this feat on YouTube at www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/periodic-tablet-etched-on-a-single-hair-as-birthday-gift-20101230. See also Science 334, no. 7 (October 2011), p. 24.

  the English chemist William Prout: For a brief biography of Prout (1785–1850), see Rosenfeld 2003.

  Eddington proposed in 1920: Eddington 1920. At the time he still considered annihilation, too, as a possible source of energy. Eddington discussed the source of stellar energy in Eddington 1926.

  the French physicist Jean-Baptiste Perrin: Wesemael 2009 described nicely the contributions of Perrin (1870–1942), and of the American physical chemist William Draper Harkins (1873–1951). See also Shaviv 2009, chapter 4.

  “go and find a hotter place”: Eddington 1926, p. 301.

  On one occasion, physicist Ludwik Silberstein: The famous astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar heard this story directly from Eddington. It is described in Berenstein 1973, p. 192.