The Role of Chance in Science

“Chance” in science is a relatively common occurrence. Similar to life, scientists cannot ever be certain on results or outcomes that their experiments may bring. Scientists could be attempting to find specific results and part of the experimental process could actually lead to more answers. The article, “Discovery, Chance and the Scientific Method”, by Fran Slowiczek and Pamela Peters provides several examples that prove the same point. For example, if Luigi Galvani had not have noticed the frog legs jerking when the metals touched, the study of “neurophysiology and clinical neurology” wouldn’t have come to be known in 1791. Even though he did not identify the importance of the two metals, the observations he made eventually led to other discoveries like circuitry. Slowiczek and Peters wrote, “to have meaning, every observation or discovery must fit into a pre-existing pattern of ideas in the observer’s mind. Just as a word means little out of context, a new observation or discovery needs a proper context in which to fit in order to be most meaningful.” So an experiment or experimental mindset is needed to watch for possible “leads.” If you are not thinking about possibilities that occur from different steps in any experiment, you are not likely to make those “chance discoveries.” Your odds of a “chance discovery” also increase when you are well educated on what to look for or something that might be suspicious during an experiment. As stated, the work of multiple scientists over a span of one hundred years, led to the development of penicillin. If Alexander Fleming wasn’t in the correct mindset when performing his experiment he may have missed the important observation he made to successfully discover penicillin. Without multiple observations from several scientists, penicillin would not be the life-saving medicine