A Comedy of Scientific Errors

Abstract

William Shakespeare may well have foreshadowed the modern television sitcom. His comic misadventures were expertly crafted. In A Comedy of Errors , for example, twins (with twin servants), each separated at birth, converge unbeknownst to each other in the same town. Mistaken identity leads to miscommunication. More mistaken identity follows, with more misdelivered messages and yet more misinterpretations. Hilarious consequences ensue. It is a stock comedic formula in modern entertainment. A character first makes an unintentional error. Then ironically, in trying to correct it, things only get laughably worse. Science, we imagine, is safeguarded against such embarrassing episodes. In the lore of scientists, echoed among teachers, science is “self-correcting.” Replication, in particular, ensures that errors are exposed for what they are. Research promptly returns to its fruitful trajectory. Serious stuff, science. But just such a case of compounded error occurred in science in the late 18th century. Joseph Priestley discovered that plants can restore the “goodness” of air that had been fouled by animals or combustion. But others could not replicate his results. Even Priestley himself. After further work, Priestley attributed the observed effect to a different cause – only to find later that the new conclusion itself was mistaken! For us now, the story seems amusing, but it is also nonetheless instructive. The case invites us to reconsider the sacred bovine that science is “self-correcting,” especially due to failures of replication. Indeed, this reassessment leads us deeper into reflecting on our romantic idealizations of science, an enduring legacy of Priestley’s Enlightenment period, centuries ago. The story begins in the early 1770s, in Leeds, England. Joseph Priestley – minister, avid experimentalist, and self-taught chemist – had been investigating various kinds of air. At this time, he was examining various ways of making air noxious: by the putrefaction of dead mice …