MHC360-2021
Class #2:  Wednesday, February 10th

What inspires people to become scientists?
In the first session, we talked about science as a profession, some of its practitioners and its characteristics.   In this session, we will consider how people became scientists and some of their motivations.   To do this, we will initially focus on a fictional character, Martin Arrowsmith.  His story is based on a number of features of medical science in New York City in the first part of the 20th century, but the principles remain important today, illustrating some of the incentives for doing science and some of the practical and philosophical pitfalls.  Moreover, the story involves infectious diseases, including an effort to control an outbreak of a potential pandemic caused by the plague bacterium.    The story was told first in an award-winning novel (see below), which was made into a compelling movie.

Assigned viewing:
Arrowsmith (1931), movie directed by John Ford, starring Ronald Coleman and Helen Hayes.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2xkDGAZil76RlE3SkZnUXNlR2c/view?usp=drivesdk

Martin Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, an excellent but long novel, was published in 1925 and served as the basis for the movie. Paul de Kruif introduced the author, Sinclair Lewis, to scientists at the Rockefeller Institute in NYC to get him interested!) https://archive.org/details/martinarrowsmith030614mbp

In class, we will discuss many aspects of the story, with special focus on the career decisions made by Arrowsmith and the crisis he faced when sent to test his ideas in the middle of a plague epidemic.

Additional reading:  Everyone should read at least one chapter from the following book and be prepared to describe what you learned from a chapter:

Paul de Kruif, The Microbe Hunters.  de Kruif, himself a microbiologist, published this wonderful collection of essays about heroic scientists in the age of discovery of the infectious causes of disease.  (Incidentally but interestingly, he helped Sinclair Lewis with Arrowsmith, leading to a vitriolic dispute after the novel was published.) Many scientists of my vintage claim de Kruif’s book as an inspiration for their choice of career.)

https://laurieximenez.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/1a_microbehunters_pauldekruif.pdf

Further readings (not required but some will be mentioned in discussion):
The readings listed below are further afield and address various aspects of the inspiration to pursue a scientific career.    Some see science as way to get a grip on the meaning of life, a kind of philosophy, based on the idea that science can reveal the nature of things (e.g., The Swerve, by Greenblatt); others see science in a similar fashion, as a way “to explain the world”  (see the book with that name by Weinberg); other view science as a way to enjoy life through stimulating, thought-provoking careers (see the autobiography by Crick); and yet others view science as a way to gain personal gratification by improving the human condition (as in the book by de Kruif).  Some of these motivations are also illustrated by characters in novels (e.g. Arrowsmith or those by CP Snow) or in the short stories by Andrea Barrett.  Others are inspired by a provocative idea (see Erwin Schrodinger’s short manifesto) or by a compelling history of a verdant field of science (like Horace Judson’s).

  1. Greenblatt, The Swerve (2014) A gripping tale about the rediscovery of a long poem by Lucretius, who viewed the world in a very modern way. You can listen for free at

https://archive.org/details/00000000_20141012  (listen to the Preface, pp 1-13)

(To learn more about Lucretius and his poetry, read this version of On the Nature of Things:

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/carus-on-the-nature-of-things,

http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.html)

  1. Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (1990)

Especially Chapter 2 (The Gossip Test)

 

(or read PA Lawrence, “Francis Crick: A Singular Approach to Scientific Discovery,” Cell 167: 1436, 2016). http://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(16)31529-X.pdf)

  1. Weinberg, To Explain the World (2015)

A dense, long, clear history of science by a great contemporary physicist

https://www.amazon.com/Explain-World-Discovery-Modern-Science/dp/0062346660

(instructively reviewed by Jim Holt in NYROB,  Sept 24, 2015, p 53-54; http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/09/24/steven-weinberg-core-science/

C.P. Snow, The Search (a short novel written in 1934 by an eminent 20th century British novelist, politician, and physicist, about the early stages of the career of a British physicist; cheap paper versions available from Amazon).

Andrea Barrett, Archangel (a 2004  collection of short stories about the growing influence of biological science on young people in the late 19th and early 20th century by a contemporary writer)

No free ride here: https://www.amazon.com/Archangel-Fiction-Andrea-Barrett/dp/0393348776

E.Schrodinger, What is Life?  (1944)(an essay by a famous physicist about the physical properties of living things that raised intriguing questions about how life could operate according to the laws of physics) https://archive.org/details/WhatIsLife-EdwardSchrodinger

H.F. Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation (a magisterial yet intimate and informal history of the rise of molecular biology as a discipline, teaching how the central precepts of modern biology were elucidated)  http://fr.ebooke.info/?book=0879694785

Questions to consider before class:
In general: What are the motivations for a career in science?
For discussion of the ethical dilemmas in Arrowsmith:

What special pressures exist in the conduct of research on human subjects?

What is and what justifies a randomized clinical trial?

What patient protections would you want to impose?

What pressures were operating on Martin Arrowsmith when he made his decisions about distribution of his “vaccine”?

What would have been the right decision for you?  Why?

How is this story related to development and testing of vaccines against the novel coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic?

Follow-ups to the central event in Arrowsmith (not required reading, but interesting):

An article in STAT in Dec 2016 about treatment of infection with bacterial viruses (bacteriophages), the kind of treatment being tested in Arrowsmith.

https://www.statnews.com/2016/12/07/virus-bacteria-phage-therapy/

A better written and more recent story about bacteriophage therapy.    “When a virus is the cure” by Nicola Twilley from The New Yorker magazine, December 20, 2020.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/annals-of-medicine

The news about an Ebola vaccine that appeared too late to be helpful in the epidemic in West Africa a few years ago.      DG McNeil, “New Ebola Vaccine Gives 100 Percent Protection,” NY Times Dec 22, 2016.  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/health/ebola-vaccine.html

The article that describes results of the Pfizer SARS-Cov-2 vaccine trial: “The efficacy and safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccine”, FP Polack et al, New England Journal of Medicine, Dec.10, 2020.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577?query=recirc_mostViewed_railB_article