For as long as there has been science there has been scientific competition. What I mean by this, is the competition between researchers in the same or similar fields of interest. The competition either resides in their need to beat the other to the claim of discovery of the same thing or in the opposition of their theories. People, on the whole, are ego-driven and scientists are no exception. The question I pose here is this: does this competition have an overall beneficial or negative effect on innovation and research?
Historically, there have been some huge rivalries in science, between science and religion, and between science and politics. For this blog, I will focus on the one on one science-guy feuds and let me tell you, there are many to choose from (I assume there will be many contemporary examples but I think for this, I will pick from the deceased, non-litigious group.) It is interesting to see while reading through these cases of scientific war that there seems to be a clear-cut winner at different times but public opinion may change over the years and may have a lot to do with where someone’s alliances may lie. History has a habit of being written by the victors, or so the saying goes, so you have to wonder if any of these stories are 100% accurate.
Newton and Leibniz- This dispute between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz is as famous as to have been known as the Calculus Controversy. The basis is that each claimed to have invented calculus. Leibniz had a multi-pronged defense of his claim of first discovery (which you can find here) but the long and short of it is that the majority of history books place Newton as the Father of Calculus. From the beginning, there seemed to be a bias in favour of Newton. After receiving a letter from Leibniz about the priority dispute, the Royal Society sided with Newton and never even asked Leibniz about his version of events. Today the consensus seems to be that Newton and Leibniz independently invented and described calculus in the 1600s.
Cope and Marsh – An intellectual feud in the field of paleontology known as the Bone Wars stretched over 2 decades and did much to damage the careers, fortunes, and possibly the lives of each man. Edward Drinker Cope was born into a wealthy Quaker family in Pennsylvania and Othniel C. Marsh was from a more modest family in Upstate New York. They were not always enemies but perhaps viewed each other with suspicion; they came from such differing backgrounds that Marsh looked at Cope as a bit of a dilettante and Cope thought Marsh uncouth, rough, and without any real scientific background. The feud began when Cope reconstructed a skeleton of a dinosaur specimen (Elasmosaurus) with the head attached to the tail. This is not as stupid as it may sound since this fossil had not been seen up until this point and Cope could not fathom a creature with such a long neck. Upon hearing about this error, Marsh (or so the story goes) publicly pointed this mistake out. This war went on for another twenty years and even reached out from the grave. Cope made a final request of having his brain removed to determine the size because he was certain that it would have been larger than Marsh’s (‘mine’s bigger than yours…’). This last request was not granted.
Edison and Tesla – Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla started off as boss and employee and quickly became competitors in what was termed the War of the Currents (the fight between defenders of AC and DC electrical currents). When Tesla first immigrated to the United States he worked for a short time for Edison Machine Works before he started to work on his own with help from the industrialist, George Westinghouse. There has been some speculation as to why he left Edison after such a short period, including owed bonuses, but there did seem to be bad blood after his departure. As with Cope and Marsh, the two seemed so different and maybe did not see things the same way. Edison Electric actively tried to promote their DC current as the better and safer alternative than the Westinghouse AC current and went on to electrocute a number of animals to prove their point. (Side note here: electricity can kill you.) This was going to be a huge amount of possible money to be made so the propaganda gloves came off. I personally have my favoured side in this particular ‘war ‘more than the other two aforementioned scientific conflicts. This is kind of weird being that these events happened so long ago and I knew neither person but this may have something to with the fact that I have read more about this than the other two. I can understand why opinion could go to one or the other. In the end, Tesla didn’t even have much to do with this ‘war’ but history still views it as a head to head competition.
There are so many more examples of this type of scientific competition such as Koch and Pasteur, Salk and Sabin (who I may go into at a later date), and the Banting, Best, MacLeod, and Collip insulin group (another very interesting and politically divisive discovery). This type of competition continues on to this day and the jury is out on whether this is a good or bad thing for research. Scientists have always been told to ‘publish or perish’ and if there is the added pressure to be the first to do so on a particular topic, could this produce inaccuracies, sloppy testing, and/or straight-up fraud? This is definitely something that I will go into in a future blog. The fact that I am not a competitive person at all makes a lot of this behavior fascinating to me. (As I type this, I am reminded that I will not play chess with my husband any longer. I did throw the board and men at him after losing 2 games to him very early in our marriage. We still play other card and board games without incident, but not chess.)
–Janice Willson
There is so much more to read about all of these cases and if you are interested, check out the links below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz–Newton_calculus_controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_Wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents
