Striking Errors in Scientific Research

Venus. Image taken
by Mariner 10

Errors are not rare in scientific research. Since man is doing science (i.e. since man is man), errors have been made. Science often progresses by trial and error, which means that something is tried, found to be wrong, and then something else is tried. From that point of view, making mistakes and verifying that they are errors is one of the typical procedures of the scientific method, so no one should be criticized for using it.

The problem is, in late times the way to publish the results of an observation or an experiment has changed. Up to now, a well-founded article was written, criticized by a number of scientists in the field, and published in a magazine, which disseminated the finding. This is still being done today, but mass media are often used, before or after the article is published, to spread the "discovery" much more quickly and to many more people. If we take into account that the knowledge about science in mass media is usually ridiculously small, the news is often accompanied by misleading headlines (and sometimes misleading texts), as I have denounced in previous posts in this blog.

Since the dissemination of scientific discoveries is done in this way, the general public frequently finds out about the supposed "discovery", but not about its refutation, because this has not the same appeal and the media don't usually publish it. For this reason, the supposed "discoveries" can be engraved in the people's mind, and it's very difficult to eradicate them.

Let's look at a few examples of striking mistakes made in scientific research:

•         The discovery of polywater: in the late 1960s, some Soviet chemists claimed to have discovered a new form of polymerized liquid water, which would arise spontaneously when normal water passes through very narrow capillaries. At that time, the media did not spread it much. For example, the Spanish major newspaper La Vanguardia just published an article on October 21, 1969, saying this:

The surprise has now come from water, as it seems that there exists a polywater. That such a simple liquid, so familiar to us, which has been studied a lot, can still give us surprises, will seem strange to some.

Another piece of news, published on March 26, 1972, is a review of a lecture given by Luis Miravitlles, where he was already suspicious about the existence of polywater:

Despite the many results obtained to date... it is still impossible to decide whether polywater is a true polymer or an artifact produced by conditions in the preparation.

The second alternative turned out to be true. Experiments carried out around the world showed that the properties of polywater were a consequence of the presence of impurities in ordinary water. But La Vanguardia did not publish another article on the subject, so the final refutation did not receive the same diffusion as the original news.

•         The discovery of cold fusion: 20 years after polywater, this new "discovery" received much more attention by the media. In the archive of La Vanguardia, for instance, there are dozens of news items related to this, the first of which was published on April 13, 1989. This was due to the fact that, for the first time in the history of science, a "scientific discovery" was disseminated through a press conference before being published in a scientific magazine. And since, from the beginning, most physicists considered the "discovery" impossible, the media echoed them, so just a year later it was considered a failure by almost everyone.

Thalidomide molecule.
A scientific mistake
with awful consequences

Let's look at a few recent cases, which not so long ago made big headlines and then faded away:

•         A bacterium uses arsenic rather than phosphorous in its DNA: Announced with fanfare by NASA in December 2010, this "discovery" was removed from the scientific heritage less than two years later.

•         Neutrinos faster than light. The news came out in 2011, but it was soon refuted by the discoverers themselves, who found a loose cable that had broken synchronism between the starting point and the arrival point of the neutrinos.

•   Gravitational waves in the cosmic background radiation. Announced in 2014, the "discovery" of those waves was supposed to confirm the inflationary theory of the early universe. (Some media incorrectly spoke of a confirmation of the existence of the multiverse). In less than a month it was found that the effect detected had been produced by the dust of our own galaxy. It is still unobserved in the background radiation.

•         Presence of phosphane in the atmosphere of Venus, news of 2020, which could be considered as an indication of the possible existence of microscopic life. Subsequent analyzes have not confirmed the presence of phosphane.

The same post in Spanish

Thematic Thread about Science in General: Previous Next

Manuel Alfonseca