Morton A. Meyers

Prize Fight explores rivalries between scientists seeking recognition for momentous discoveries. It focuses primarily on two prominent scientific disputes of the 20th century. One is the conflict over who deserves credit for the discovery that streptomycin is effective against tuberculosis, described as “one of the most contentious issues in medical history.” The other case is a 30 year dispute over who deserves credit for conception and early development of the MRI instrument as a diagnostic tool. In each case, the competition for credit was intensified by the awards of the Nobel Prize as well as the prestigious Lasker Award to but one party to the dispute. Likewise, in each case, the competition resulted in legal action in which the unrecognized party gained some financial recompense.

Author Morton Meyers did extensive research on these two key episodes. His investigations led him to search archival material at Rutgers University and at Temple University, and included (by his account) correspondence, memos, pre-trial depositions, photos, contemporary accounts, and memoirs. In addition, Meyers personally interviewed key figures in the disputes to get their perspectives.

The result is an even- handed, well- researched account that recognizes that credit and blame is shared by each of the conflicting parties. Thus, in the conflict between Selman Waksman and his former graduate student Albert Schatz over the discovery of streptomycin, the author concludes: “Human emotions, human ego, not science, drove them apart. Both were right. Both were wrong. And therein lies the tragedy.” The two key episodes are placed in the context of other cases, including the conflict over credit for work leading to the polio vaccine, the structure of DNA, the use of tranquilizers to treat depression, discovery and purification of insulin, and characterization of the AIDS virus.

Meyer’s book is a useful addition to recent scientific history, and raises larger questions over how credit is to be allocated among the many contributors to a scientific advance. However, in my opinion, Meyers exaggerates the nature and significance of conflict between scientists for the sake of his book’s theme: “The scientific enterprise brims over with competition, battles, and injustices. Conflicts may be resolved in an amicable fashion or may ignite bitter recriminations” (p. 5). As a working scientist, I can attest that a healthy competition can be intense under some conditions, but for every such situation, there are innumerable other cases of broad collaboration – a reason why scientific papers now routinely include so many authors from multiple institutions. Likewise, Meyers sets up a straw-man argument in claiming that “The scientist is generally viewed as detached, objective, dispassionate. Nothing could be further from the truth” (p 4). In an age in which so many scientists are in the public eye (Richard Dawkins, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Francis Collins, and Stephen Jay Gould among them), it’s hard to imagine a general public so naïve as to suppose that scientists are other than human beings, even among those who have not encountered James Watson’s “The Double Helix”. The naïve and uninformed view that Meyers attributes to the general public allows him to claim his own book to be revelatory: “A great secret of science has been revealed regarding its fundamentally ego- driven competitive nature.” (p 231).

Finally, while justifiably decrying cases where competition arguably has led to unjust treatment of a contributor to a scientific advance, author Morton Meyers does not consider the benefits of the healthy competition between scientists. It is this sort of competition that drives scientific advance in the face of daily frustrations, inadequate resources, bureaucratic regulations, and funding difficulties, and that does (for the most part) ensure that resources continue to flow towards research groups that have proven records of success. Likewise, while the author notes that the peer review system has its flaws (in potentially not recognizing truly innovative work), he offers nothing better to replace it.

In sum, I enjoyed and learned from Prize Fight, for the light it sheds on recent rivalries between research scientists. As a descriptive work focusing on two recent case histories, Prize Fight succeeds, although as a proscriptive one, not so much… (mehr)

This is a book of two parts; I'll start with the second one, which comprises the last two-thirds or so of the book. This covers two instances of fights over credit in the sciences, specifically the medical sciences. These are over streptomycin (an antibiotic, and the first effective treatment for tuberculosis) and MRI. In the former case, a graduate student felt he was not given sufficient credit for the work he did; in the latter, one of two researchers working in the same area felt that the other didn't cite him for what was essentially his breakthrough. In both cases, Meyers provides in-depth research (including archival sources and personal interviews), and creates interesting and compelling narratives. This is where the book really came to life-- though the title is a bit of a misnomer, as it's not about being "first," but about getting credit at all.

The first part of the book reads like an attempt to find some kind of general applicability in these two specific anecdotes; Meyers wants you to see how science's rationality and objectivity is affected by personality and bias. It's a little too simplistic to really work, and comes across mostly as a series of anecdotes than a compelling synthesis. I take issue with some of his engagement with non-scientific disciplines; most museum theorists would disagree with his assertion that art museums don't create a narrative of progress, and I was underwhelmed by his reading of Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith. Plus he says Darwin and Wallace independently coined the phrase "survival of the fittest," when in fact it was Herbert Spencer's coinage! I'd rather have seen a third "prize fight" story than this awkward attempt to generalize the concepts of the book.… (mehr)