It’s a term widely used by certain media, which only entered the dictionary in 1992… It designates the fortuitous discovery of something that you weren’t looking for. Antibiotics, erectile dysfunction, medicine advances by serendipity. When chance does things well…
A recent example of well-known serendipity, that of the famous little blue pill. Initially, this drug, viagra, was tested against pulmonary arterial hypertension. Very quickly, the laboratory realizes that the hopes placed in it will not materialize. On the other hand, one of its side effects is interesting: it causes erections. The laboratory therefore quickly changed its tune and developed the drug for another indication: the treatment of impotence.
The most often cited example of serendipity is that of the discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin. Its discoverer, Alexander Fleming, was said to be a little careless. He would have gone on vacation leaving his boxes of bacteria cultures uncovered, which would then have been infected. But if he was negligent, he was still very smart since, when he returned, he noticed that around the edges of the molds, there was an area in which the bacteria had not grown. That’s how he managed to identify the bacteria-killing fungus.
Chance is not everything.
The curiosity of the researcher as well as his ability to respond to the unexpected are very important. Imagine for a second that Alexander Fleming threw his infected Petri dishes in the trash. We might not have known about antibiotics…
Medical researchers do not have a monopoly on serendipity. Example: Velcro. It was while walking his dog that a Swiss engineer imagined this strip of self-gripping fabric. He discovered that it was difficult to remove the flowers of Greater Burdock – it’s a fruit – when they stuck to his dog’s hair. Back home, he examined this plant and Velcro was born…
We must not want to plan everything in research, we must leave spaces of freedom. A revolutionary discovery can arise at any time. In the Netherlands, there is a tradition among researchers: on Friday afternoons, they have the freedom to carry out “personal research”… without being obliged to justify their actions.
Doctor Jean-Francois Lemoine
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