Accidents and Intellects

I have got this new urge to write short staccato bursts on various topics that all my blogs will be short and simple for some time atleast to come.

I was walking down to my lab and I was contemplating whether scientific discoveries are accidental or are they the results of years and years of intellectual premeditation. I guess you have both kinds. Sir Issac Newton was day dreaming or rather having an afternoon siesta when an apple planted itself on his head with not too less force. Something snapped inside him then that lead to the world famous discovery of gravity. But nobody knows whether he used to think about it prior to that incident.

So why I brought that up was because many a times I stumble on to something important in the lab by sheer accident and that makes me feel guilty. "I should have thought of this before myself", I tell myself. Were all these years of education wasted on me? I don't know. Sometimes I do think and plan out an experiment (not that it always works). But then at those times I feel satisfied that my knowledge has been put to proper use, even if the experiment does not go as I planned. Couple of days ago I read that the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to two Australian doctors who discovered that ulcers were caused by bacteria, partly by accident, the news report said in brackets. So does that make them feel atleast a wee bit more guilty because they cannot take full credit to the invention. I don't know. I should probably find out ;) I should also mention that one of the doctors in the duo swallowed a solution containing the bacteria and infected himself just to prove his point(because prior to this discovery it was widely belived that ulcers were primarily the result of stress). I bow down to his commitment and dedication.