Nobel Goes to Researchers Who Challenged Conventional Wisdom on Ulcers

A couple of decades ago, everyone “knew” that stomach ulcers were caused by lifestyle shortcomings. In short, stress was the culprit and avoiding certain foods would take care of some of it. Instead, two scientists noticed that ulcers had Helicobacter Pylori bacteria in them. A few experiments to confirm their suspicions and a few papers in peer-review journals, and everybody now knows better. And Robin Warren and Barry Marshall have a Nobel for Medicine.

This story isn’t so much about the biological research itself, a field well beyond the expertise of this journal, but about the perfection of the scientific method. Science is the only method of knowledge (if such a term can be employed to distinguish it from other ways of “knowing” about life) that comes with a built-in correction mechanism. Faith, revelation, poetry, beauty and other ways of knowing lack that mechanism.

What Dr. Marshall and Professor Warren noted was a new datum, the presence of h. pylori in ulcers. When they asked themselves if there were a connection between the presence of germs and the ulcers, they essentially said, “What if everybody is wrong?” And by everybody, they meant their professional peers as well as the lady in the corner shop with the bad stomach. The Germ Theory of Disease is not new, and if the same sort of germ keeps turning up in ulcers, could there be a causal link?

But as Galileo learned when he met the Pope, and as those who accept Darwin rather than Genesis are discovering in American class rooms, there is an entrenched institutional stubbornness about facts. “The idea of stress and things like that [as the cause of ulcers] was just so entrenched nobody could really believe that it was a bacteria," Dr. Marshall told the Associated Press. "It had to come from some weird place like Perth, Western Australia, because I think nobody else would have even considered it.” Yet, Professor Warren said, “It is nice to be officially recognised and it gives some sort of a stamp of approval, but we believed it within a few months because it was so bloody obvious.” Or as Groucho Marx once asked, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lyin' eyes?”

Hundreds of years ago, everyone “knew” that imbalances in the body’s humors made one sick. Everybody “knew” that the earth was the center of the universe. Everybody “knew” that eclipses were caused by a dragon swallowing the sun. Hundreds of years from now, everyone will know that this generation of humans believed some rather silly things as well. The question isn’t even will this generation be the one to correct itself or will it go to the grave being wrong. The real question is will it learn anything along the way? People like Dr. Marshall and Professor Warren give reason to hope.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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