Interview

A Q&A with Morton A Meyers about his book Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs, followed by some fun facts from the book.

Your view of the process of medical discovery may be considered controversial. How would you summarize it?

In my book Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs, I reveal that many of the major medical discoveries have occurred simply through chance—through a surprising, unexpected finding or observation that led research in a different direction, which resulted in a discovery of far greater value than the original goal.


What are major examples?

I describe about one hundred instances. But most people—scientists included—are astonished to realize that most of our antibiotics to combat infections, chemotherapy drugs against cancer, psychotropic drugs which modify mood disorders, and many advances in cardiovascular treatments and procedures were stumbled upon. So many of these chance discoveries, such as Valium, Lipitor, and Viagra, have become household names.


These fields cover much of modern medicine. Are these advances the results of specialized teams with large federally-supported grants?

The astonishing answer to that is a resounding "No!" Rather, they were typically discovered by individual curiosity-driven researchers with ...