Morton A. MeyersBesprekingen

A series of entertaining reconstructions of key scientific discoveries that were largely happenstance. The book is informative, fun and leaves you with a view of science that is much less mysterious and a lot more luck and politics.

The book emphasises the medical sciences which are a bit particular in comparison fo others in their ethical aspects and complexity.

3/24/22

Prize Fight explores rivalries between scientists seeking recognition for momentous discoveries. It focuses primarily on two prominent scientific disputes of the 20th century. One is the conflict over who deserves credit for the discovery that streptomycin is effective against tuberculosis, described as “one of the most contentious issues in medical history.” The other case is a 30 year dispute over who deserves credit for conception and early development of the MRI instrument as a diagnostic tool. In each case, the competition for credit was intensified by the awards of the Nobel Prize as well as the prestigious Lasker Award to but one party to the dispute. Likewise, in each case, the competition resulted in legal action in which the unrecognized party gained some financial recompense.

Author Morton Meyers did extensive research on these two key episodes. His investigations led him to search archival material at Rutgers University and at Temple University, and included (by his account) correspondence, memos, pre-trial depositions, photos, contemporary accounts, and memoirs. In addition, Meyers personally interviewed key figures in the disputes to get their perspectives.

The result is an even- handed, well- researched account that recognizes that credit and blame is shared by each of the conflicting parties. Thus, in the conflict between Selman Waksman and his former graduate student Albert Schatz over the discovery of streptomycin, the author concludes: “Human emotions, human ego, not science, drove them apart. Both were right. Both were wrong. And therein lies the tragedy.” The two key episodes are placed in the context of other cases, including the conflict over credit for work leading to the polio vaccine, the structure of DNA, the use of tranquilizers to treat depression, discovery and purification of insulin, and characterization of the AIDS virus.

Meyer’s book is a useful addition to recent scientific history, and raises larger questions over how credit is to be allocated among the many contributors to a scientific advance. However, in my opinion, Meyers exaggerates the nature and significance of conflict between scientists for the sake of his book’s theme: “The scientific enterprise brims over with competition, battles, and injustices. Conflicts may be resolved in an amicable fashion or may ignite bitter recriminations” (p. 5). As a working scientist, I can attest that a healthy competition can be intense under some conditions, but for every such situation, there are innumerable other cases of broad collaboration – a reason why scientific papers now routinely include so many authors from multiple institutions. Likewise, Meyers sets up a straw-man argument in claiming that “The scientist is generally viewed as detached, objective, dispassionate. Nothing could be further from the truth” (p 4). In an age in which so many scientists are in the public eye (Richard Dawkins, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Francis Collins, and Stephen Jay Gould among them), it’s hard to imagine a general public so naïve as to suppose that scientists are other than human beings, even among those who have not encountered James Watson’s “The Double Helix”. The naïve and uninformed view that Meyers attributes to the general public allows him to claim his own book to be revelatory: “A great secret of science has been revealed regarding its fundamentally ego- driven competitive nature.” (p 231).

Finally, while justifiably decrying cases where competition arguably has led to unjust treatment of a contributor to a scientific advance, author Morton Meyers does not consider the benefits of the healthy competition between scientists. It is this sort of competition that drives scientific advance in the face of daily frustrations, inadequate resources, bureaucratic regulations, and funding difficulties, and that does (for the most part) ensure that resources continue to flow towards research groups that have proven records of success. Likewise, while the author notes that the peer review system has its flaws (in potentially not recognizing truly innovative work), he offers nothing better to replace it.

In sum, I enjoyed and learned from Prize Fight, for the light it sheds on recent rivalries between research scientists. As a descriptive work focusing on two recent case histories, Prize Fight succeeds, although as a proscriptive one, not so much½

This is a book of two parts; I'll start with the second one, which comprises the last two-thirds or so of the book. This covers two instances of fights over credit in the sciences, specifically the medical sciences. These are over streptomycin (an antibiotic, and the first effective treatment for tuberculosis) and MRI. In the former case, a graduate student felt he was not given sufficient credit for the work he did; in the latter, one of two researchers working in the same area felt that the other didn't cite him for what was essentially his breakthrough. In both cases, Meyers provides in-depth research (including archival sources and personal interviews), and creates interesting and compelling narratives. This is where the book really came to life-- though the title is a bit of a misnomer, as it's not about being "first," but about getting credit at all.

The first part of the book reads like an attempt to find some kind of general applicability in these two specific anecdotes; Meyers wants you to see how science's rationality and objectivity is affected by personality and bias. It's a little too simplistic to really work, and comes across mostly as a series of anecdotes than a compelling synthesis. I take issue with some of his engagement with non-scientific disciplines; most museum theorists would disagree with his assertion that art museums don't create a narrative of progress, and I was underwhelmed by his reading of Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith. Plus he says Darwin and Wallace independently coined the phrase "survival of the fittest," when in fact it was Herbert Spencer's coinage! I'd rather have seen a third "prize fight" story than this awkward attempt to generalize the concepts of the book.

The history of science and often, the history of scientists, is a subject I care about greatly and something I read about frequently. Prize Fight steps back from the front line of science to consider the scientists and their personalities, their motivations, and how they interact and compete in their fields. While I enjoyed the book for a hundred pages or so, it became repetitive in the message it attempted to deliver. Meyers drives into us over and over how scientists have the same flaws, ambitions, and ethical dilemmas as the rest of us. An ok book, not a special one.

This was a good exploration of rivalries in science, and how they can adversely impact the scientific process by encouraging researchers to not cooperate with each other. I was particularly interested in the Selman Waksman controversy, and this was covered quite well.

Prize Fight explores rivalries between scientists seeking recognition for momentous discoveries. It focuses primarily on two prominent scientific disputes of the 20th century. One is the conflict over who deserves credit for the discovery that streptomycin is effective against tuberculosis, described as “one of the most contentious issues in medical history.” The other case is a 30 year dispute over who deserves credit for conception and early development of the MRI instrument as a diagnostic tool. In each case, the competition for credit was intensified by the awards of the Nobel Prize as well as the prestigious Lasker Award to but one party to the dispute. Likewise, in each case, the competition resulted in legal action in which the unrecognized party gained some financial recompense.

Author Morton Meyers did extensive research on these two key episodes. His investigations led him to search archival material at Rutgers University and at Temple University, and included (by his account) correspondence, memos, pre-trial depositions, photos, contemporary accounts, and memoirs. In addition, Meyers personally interviewed key figures in the disputes to get their perspectives.

The result is an even- handed, well- researched account that recognizes that credit and blame is shared by each of the conflicting parties. Thus, in the conflict between Selman Waksman and his former graduate student Albert Schatz over the discovery of streptomycin, the author concludes: “Human emotions, human ego, not science, drove them apart. Both were right. Both were wrong. And therein lies the tragedy.” The two key episodes are placed in the context of other cases, including the conflict over credit for work leading to the polio vaccine, the structure of DNA, the use of tranquilizers to treat depression, discovery and purification of insulin, and characterization of the AIDS virus.

Meyer’s book is a useful addition to recent scientific history, and raises larger questions over how credit is to be allocated among the many contributors to a scientific advance. However, in my opinion, Meyers exaggerates the nature and significance of conflict between scientists for the sake of his book’s theme: “The scientific enterprise brims over with competition, battles, and injustices. Conflicts may be resolved in an amicable fashion or may ignite bitter recriminations” (p. 5). As a working scientist, I can attest that a healthy competition can be intense under some conditions, but for every such situation, there are innumerable other cases of broad collaboration – a reason why scientific papers now routinely include so many authors from multiple institutions. Likewise, Meyers sets up a straw-man argument in claiming that “The scientist is generally viewed as detached, objective, dispassionate. Nothing could be further from the truth” (p 4). In an age in which so many scientists are in the public eye (Richard Dawkins, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Francis Collins, and Stephen Jay Gould among them), it’s hard to imagine a general public so naïve as to suppose that scientists are other than human beings, even among those who have not encountered James Watson’s “The Double Helix”. The naïve and uninformed view that Meyers attributes to the general public allows him to claim his own book to be revelatory: “A great secret of science has been revealed regarding its fundamentally ego- driven competitive nature.” (p 231).

Finally, while justifiably decrying cases where competition arguably has led to unjust treatment of a contributor to a scientific advance, author Morton Meyers does not consider the benefits of the healthy competition between scientists. It is this sort of competition that drives scientific advance in the face of daily frustrations, inadequate resources, bureaucratic regulations, and funding difficulties, and that does (for the most part) ensure that resources continue to flow towards research groups that have proven records of success. Likewise, while the author notes that the peer review system has its flaws (in potentially not recognizing truly innovative work), he offers nothing better to replace it.

In sum, I enjoyed and learned from Prize Fight, for the light it sheds on recent rivalries between research scientists. As a descriptive work focusing on two recent case histories, Prize Fight succeeds, although as a proscriptive one, not so much.½

Science is about discovery, about unlocking the truth, about winning prizes and gaining recognition. This is the message of Prize Fight. The author looks at the researchers and what they will do to win a prize or gain recognition, sometimes by obscuring the credit for a rival or sometimes by lying.

This book does tell about a side of science that the public hears little about, but sadly, in the age of big budget research grants, it is a story that is becoming too common. Some of the cases are outrageous and one can easily see how researchers' lives can be made or broken by these awards.

While the book it fine, the writing is not gripping and could use a bit more of a storytelling arc. Also, I was waiting for the final chapter to sum it all up and to tell us the implications of this glory-seeking on future research and the goals of science -- it never came.½

Very interesting look at the disputes over credit for scientific discoveries. Meyers focuses on two Nobel prize disputes in the field of medicine and who gets the credit and who is overlooked.

This was an interesting book about the right for credit of scientific discoveries. As much as we would like to think that scientific and medical discoveries are done for altruistic reasons, it matters who actually gets credit. The benefits can be recognition, and this recognition can lead to career advancement and monetary gains. The book is told in several stories in which there was controversy surrounding who should get credit for a particular discovery. As a physician, I enjoyed the back story of some of medicine's most important discoveries such as insulin. One thing I enjoyed most is seeing the human side of scientists-good or bad.

It's not uncommon for scientists to be perceived as humble servants of a civilization, who often care little about money or popularity and whose sole purpose is to better the human race through scientific discovery. This is not exactly true, and Prize Fight recounts some of the petty squabbles that have happened in the past over scientific prizes, specifically the Nobel Prize.

It's not so surprising, really. I don't think anyone ever says "I want to be a scientist so I can be rich and famous," but to spend a decade or more working on something and then having someone else steal the credit must be incredibly disheartening. It's also important to keep in mind that a scientist's future is dependent on their past achievements. A Nobel Laureate will have a much easier time getting funding than someone who has no major achievements, so it is no wonder there is such an intense desire to win what other people would consider meaningless, perfunctory tokens.

The book itself isn't terrible, but I also didn't find myself terribly enthusiastic about returning to it when I wasn't reading. It starts off giving general examples of scientific rivalries, as well as some insight into why scientists are so passionate about them, and then focuses on two major rivalries over the Nobel - the discoverers of streptomycin (the cure for tuberculosis) and the two men who separately built the first MRI machines at the same time, in different places.

While the information was fascinating, I was pretty much over it about 2/3rd's of the way though. Yeah, I kind of got the point that scientists are human and can be egotistical, and that maybe the system of peer review and journal submissions is flawed, but I didn't need 230 pages to tell me that. The book felt a little one dimensional to me, and probably would have benefited by stepping outside of the Nobel Prize bubble. It's still an interesting read though, and the information will probably stick with me, but you probably won't see me recommending it to others.

This was a very interesting book because instead of focusing on the research and the science being conducted, it provided a view on the lives of the scientists. Where most books skim over how the science affects the lives of those doing the research, this book provided a view of the human qualities of the scientists. It was refreshing and interesting.

This book delivers on what it promises - stories about scientists in bitter fights about who should receive credit for work that is similar (and, in some cases, exactly the same). This is not meant to be a "behind the scenes" look at how research is done, but rather it is an attempt to humanize scientists by showing us (i.e. the general public) that they, too, suffer from egotistical rantings and ravings and petty squabbles. Which is all very interesting unless, of course, you are a normal human being who can grasp the concept that scientists are, in fact, normal human beings also, with everything that that may entail.

All that being said, the book is interesting enough in its outlines of the history of a few major scientific disputes. But the writing bothers me - it's frenetic and all over the place, jumping from topic to topic, at one minute providing a history of a scientific discovery and at the next minute providing a preachy sermon about how peer review is a terrible thing that is inhibiting great scientific discoveries. This made it difficult to read.

Not a bad book, but not a particularly good one either. Science isn't hard, kids, and neither is writing about it - we can do better.

Credit matters a lot to scientists. Actually, I think that pretty much summarizes this entire book in one sentence. It touches on various ways in which the desire for recognition, priority, publication and prize money has caused problems for individual scientists and for science in general, up to and including the extremes of plagiarism and fraud. But mostly it's concerned with disputes over credit. It covers a number of such cases, but spends a lot of the book concentrating on two in particular: the discovery of streptomycin and the development of MRI technology. In both cases, there was a Nobel Prize involved, and a scientist who did not take at all well to being snubbed for said prize.

These specific historical cases are reasonably interesting, but I have to say, much of my reaction to this book is kind of a big, "Well, duh." Of course scientists care about recognition and what that can mean for their careers. Of course those disputes sometimes get bitter, and of course you occasionally get people behaving unethically in this publish-or-perish environment. Because scientists, like the rest of us, are human beings. And Meyers' suggestions for what can be done to improve the situation seem kind of superficial. In particular, he's very keen on the notion that the scientific establishment simply isn't doing enough to encourage and accept "maverick" researchers with unorthodox ideas. And I'm not 100% sure I agree on that point. There is, after all, a very fine line between encouraging innovative thinking and being too willing to embrace ideas that sound crazy because they are crazy.

Prize Fight isn't so much an account of competition in science in general as a history of disputes over credit and priority in the medical field. The majority of the book consists of two stories (the discovery of streptomycin to treat tuberculosis and the invention of the MRI) which go into lots of irrelevant details about people and institutions involved that really have nothing to do with the actual dispute. All but a few of the cases discussed are specifically in the medical field, leaving the reader with only a narrow view of scientific discoveries over the past two centuries. He also didn't include any but one modern cases, so this didn't feel like a relevant read at all to today's issues, as much as it might actually be.
To me this book did not elucidate how research is "really" done at all, but rather recounted what takes place after the research is done and people start to misunderstand and resent one another (understandably in most cases). Meyers does little to illicit any sympathy for the supposedly wronged scientists, but in some cases makes them seem petty, hypocritical, and generally unlikable.
Meyers concludes by basically saying "We should fix this" with almost no suggestions as to how, making me think this isn't something he's really concerned about at all, but just a title that would sound good and sell.
I gave this book 3 stars despite all of the above, because the stories he shares actually are interesting and I think Part 1 actually was well-written and central to the book's concerns.

Scientific discoveries are made by painstaking research, sometimes accidentally. But who gets the credit and sometimes the golden ring (aka the Nobel Prize)? We tend to think of academics in their ivory towers with the best of motives. In his book, Prize fight: the race and rivalry to be the first in science, Morton Meyers shows us the truth of the scientific world. As a doctor and author of many scholarly works in medicine, he turns to research and who gets the credit. Many times, students and post docs do much of the work and the supervising professor gets top billing in the literature. Many times, the names of these young scientists are forgotten. They may even lose recognition for the very articles they have written. Meyers also talks about how one can properly award a prize and ignore the work that has gone before that makes the discovery possible. The author uses many case histories to illustrate his point.

Meyers uses two cases where the Nobel committee passed over deserving scientists in awarding prizes in the field of medicine. The first is Selman Waksman, an agricultural bacteriologist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1952 for the discovery of streptomycin. His assistant, Albert Schatz, actually made the discovery. The second story is about the discovery of MRI. The early work was done by Raymond Damadien. His work came to the attention of Paul Lauterbur who found a different way to see the human body with the MRI techniques, while at the same time, in England, Peter Mansfield was also working on the use of the MRI. In 2003, Lauterbur and Mansfield shared the Nobel Prize in medicine. Damadien was forgotten but, with several other scientists, mounted a campaign to right the wrong, to no avail. So who gets the credit and who loses? These are ethical issues that are current today.

There are endnotes with all of Meyer’s source material, including journal articles and online websites. Much of his material was obtained through interviews and this is cited in the notes. There is also a select bibliography containing books of interest to the reader including Meyer’s own Happy accidents, which covers the accidental discoveries in science. There are many illustrations as well as an excellent index.

Meyers uses the term “the dark side of science” as one of his chapter headings. This is so true today in a world where recognition, both fame and fortune, are important. I can recommend this to every budding scientist who would like to make a discovery as important as antibiotics or the structure of DNA as well as to the lay person who is interested in how scientific research actually happens.

Meyers's contention is that scientific discoveries of the paradigm-shifting sort are not generally made by rote testing of compounds (for example), but by serendipitous accidents that are recognized as significant. His examples generally, though not always, support this position. It's clear from the degree to which he becomes exercised that cancer research was the impetous for this book.

Fast -reading very interesting history of scientific discovery that occurs while looking for something else. A dust mote of common mold makes its way to an unwashed petri dish and leads to penicillin. A common rye fungus and fortuitous weather conditions leads to the Salem witch trials and acid trips on LSD. A side-effect of a tuberculosis drug leads to a pill for delirious schizophrenics. The book is an ode to the nerdy loner scientists we all laughed at in middle school. Long may they prosper and discover!

About: How scientists discovered groundbreaking medical treatments when they were looking for something else

Pros: Interesting, bibliography included

Cons: Some stories are more interesting than others

Grade: B½