HYPOTHESIS 



joints was questioned by no one until a few years ago when a 

 bold spirit found they got better much quicker under a regimen 

 of exercise. For many years farmers practised keeping the surface 

 of the soil loose as a mulch, believing this to decrease the loss of 

 water by evaporation. B. A. Keen showed that this beHef was 

 based on inadequate experiments and that under most circum- 

 stances the practice was useless. He thus saved the community 

 from a great deal of useless expenditure. 



(d) Shunning misconceptions. Examples have been quoted 

 showing how hypotheses may be fruitful even when wrong, but 

 nevertheless the great majority have to be abandoned as useless. 

 More serious is the fact that false hypotheses or concepts some- 

 times survive which, far from being productive, are actually 

 responsible for holding up the advance of science. Two 

 examples are the old notion that every metal contains mercury, 

 and the phlogiston doctrine. According to the latter, every 

 combustible substance contains a constituent which is given up 

 on burning, called phlogiston. This notion for long held up the 

 advance of chemistry, and stood in the way of an understanding 

 of combustion, oxidation, reduction, and other processes. It 

 was finally exposed as a fallacy by Lavoisier in 1778, but the 

 great English scientists, Priestley, Watt and Cavendish, clung to 

 the belief for some time afterwards and Priestley had not been 

 converted to the new outlook when he died in 1804. 



The exposure of serious fallacies can be as valuable in the 

 advance of science as creative discoveries, Pasteur fought and 

 conquered the notion of spontaneous generation and Hopkins 

 the semi-mystical concept of protoplasm as a giant molecule. 

 Misconceptions in medicine, apart from holding up advances, 

 have been the cause of much harm and unnecessary suffering. 

 For example, the famous Philadelphian physician, Benjamin 

 Rush (i 745-181 3), gave as an instance of the sort of treatment 

 he meted out : 



"From a newly arrived Englishman I took 144 ounces at 12 

 bleedings in 6 days; four were in 24 hours; I gave within the 

 course of the same 6 days nearly 150 grains of calomel with the 

 usual proportions of jalop and gamboge." 



' 66 



Once ideas have gained credence, they are rarely abandoned 



51 



