Nobel Ideals and Noble Errors

Christiaan Eijkman shared a 1929 Nobel Prize “for his discovery of the antineuritic vitamin.” His extensive studies on chickens and prison inmates on the island of Java in the 1890s helped establish a white rice diet as a cause of beriberi, and the rice coating as a remedy. Eijkman reported that he had traced a bacterial disease, its toxin, and its antitoxin. Beriberi, however, is a nutrient deficiency. Eijkman was wrong. Ironically, Eijkman even rejected the current explanation when it was first introduced in 1910. Although he earned a Nobel Prize for his important contribution on the role of diet, Eijkman’s original conclusion about the bacterium was just plain mistaken. Eijkman’s error may seem amusing, puzzling, or even downright disturbing—an exception to conventional expectations. Isn’t the scientific method, properly applied, supposed to protect science from error? And who can better exemplify science than Nobel Prize winners? If not, how can we trust science? And who else is to serve as role models for students and aspiring scientists? Eijkman’s case, however, is not unusual. Nobel Prize–winning scientists have frequently erred. Here I profile a handful of such cases (Figure 11.1). Among them is one striking pair, Peter Mitchell and Paul Boyer, who advocated alternative theories of energetics in the cell. Each used his perspective to understand and correct an error of the other! Ultimately, all these cases offer an occasion to reconsider another sacred bovine—that science is (or should be) free of error, and that the measure of a good scientist is how closely he or she meets that ideal. Consider first Linus Pauling, the master protein chemist. Applying his intimate knowledge of bond angles, he deciphered the alpha-helix structure of proteins in 1950, which earned him a Nobel Prize in 1954. He also reasoned fruitfully about sickle cell hemoglobin, leading to molecular understanding of its altered protein structure. Yet Pauling also believed that megadoses of vitamin C could cure the common cold. Evidence continues to indicate otherwise, although Pauling’s legacy still seems to shape popular beliefs.