Nobelly Done
The Style Editor interrupts her extended hiatus to congratulate the winners of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, J. Robin Warren and Barry J. Marshall. Drs. Warren and Marshall received this well deserved honor for their discovery that ulcers are caused not by stress and diet but by a bacterium, Heliobacter pylori. The Style Editor remembers vividly the controversy that surrounded their discovery and the lengths to which Dr. Marshall went to prove the connection in the face of established thought and the contempt of his "peers." Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, is spot on the money in saying: "I think this is a perfect example of how excellent science triumphed over conventional dogma. The prize affirms that we must keep true to our scientific principles of exploration, and continually question our assumptions." The academy, or established thought, can be a huge threat to actual science, and I am pleased that in honoring these two scientists the Nobel committee seems, at least for a moment, to recognize that.
Congratulations to two Aussie scientists who got the vibe of science. (It's the inflammation; it's Heliobacter pylori; it's the vibe.) I hope they're stoked.
1 comment:
At first glance at the SE's title I wondered if perhaps we were about to have our first PILATES post on Dr. C's blog. How delightful instead to read on about some intrepid Aussies bringing the scientific method to bear on, what now!, the scientific community and one of its many well established "theories." Is it any wonder many are asking science to be more forthcoming about the holes in evolutionary theory? Nobelly done, indeed!
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