The Dark Ages of Science

The early field of molecular biology had very similar issues where it's very impressive that Warren Weaver who funded a lot of that work felt confident in doubling down on the Rockefeller Foundation's bet for 10 or 15 years. In this stage researchers seem to just be trying things almost randomly doing the kind of iterations between experiments that you might see from kids with a chemistry kit and a basement. Andre Luaf writes about his Nobel Prize winning experiment on bacterial reproduction he writes negative experiments piled up until after months and months of despair it was decided to irradiate the bacteria with ultraviolet light this was not rational at all for ultraviolet radiations kill bacteria in bacteriophages but still looks illogical in retrospect. Francois