Real science, personified
The doctor who took one for the team
We live in a time where science has become The Science, a regime-affiliated religion whose purpose is to justify ill-gotten profits and tyrannical policy.
This goes together with many other failures: bias due to funding, the replication crisis, p-hacking, the pressure to publish positive results and data falsification. Here is a good summary to get you started on the scale of the problem (HT).
What a perfect opportunity to recall and admire real science. The following story is a perfect example.
Scientists were once certain that stomach ulcers and gastritis are caused by either stress or too much acid – the sources vary. Perhaps they thought the stress caused the acid.
In any case, these conditions were treated with antacids, antidepressants or psychotherapy.
A gastroenterologist from Perth, of all places, thought that was wrong. Barry Marshall reckoned that it was caused by harmful bacteria, based on earlier research that had shown a weird type of spiral microbe was present in sufferers.
He began treating his patients with antibiotics instead, to great effect.
The medical establishment was scandalised, not least the pharma companies doing a roaring trade in anti-acids. His peers said he was mad and refused to accept his evidence.
At that time, scientists believed bacteria could not live in the stomach because it was far too acidic. This made Barry’s theory laughable. He was mocked and attacked viciously, and he gave as good as he got.
There was an obvious way Barry could prove his hypothesis. All he needed to do was whip up the suspected strain of bacteria in a petri dish (which he’d already achieved) and then get a few brave subjects to swallow it. If it caused the predicted gastric problems over the next few days, case closed.
The problem is, it is not easy to get ethics approval for an experiment that involves deliberately causing serious harm to subjects. There was no way he could do it.
Actually, there was one way. He could not test the noxious brew on anyone else, but there was no law stopping him from guzzling it himself.
Working with his colleague, scientist Neil Noakes, he took the bacteria from a petri dish, mixed it in a beaker-full of lukewarm beef extract, and skulled it.
His wife disapproved.
Sure enough, a few days later he was crook as a dog with gastritis. Has the world ever seen a vomiting man so triumphant at becoming ill?
He took antibiotics, got better, and won a Nobel Prize.
The reason he had to take this extreme step to prove his point is institutional inertia. Scientists and doctors are supposed to welcome contrarian theories and find ways to test them. Instead, they were outraged at the implication that they’d been treating the condition the wrong way for all those years and closed ranks against the outsiders.
It’s not easy to admit a mistake, especially one being pointed out by a nobody from the arse-end of the world. But real science is a process of admitting mistakes and thereby furthering our knowledge.
These days there is ongoing research into the potential benefits of the ulcer-causing bacteria. While it causes serious problems later in life, earlier on it seems to enhance the immune system. Kids these days have much less of the bacteria in their stomachs and scientists suspect this is one of the reasons they are more prone to allergies and auto-immune diseases.
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