Follow-up: QI
Feb. 8th, 2008 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackBah, I should post something about QI's analysis of urban legends and common misconceptions. I feel, not knowing the format, I was confused the first shows I saw.
The questionable fact in this case involved the original discovery of penicillin, was it Duchesne rather than Fleming? Conveniently wikipedia describes the discoveries of penicillin before Fleming.
No, seriously. The page entitled Discoveries_of_anti-bacterial_effects_of_penicillium_moulds_before_Fleming
The situation seems to be:
* Lots of people including ancient greeks and 19-century "Arab stable boys" were aware that some moulds cured saddle sores and other infections[1].
* Several scientists, including Lister and Pasteur tried penicillum mould out
* Duchesne may have been the first to really study it, but the Institut Pasteur didn't accept any of his work.
* Fleming independently rediscovered it, and was the first to isolate the active ingredient, penicillin.
* It's slightly more complicated than that.
Thus, the traditional myth is "Fleming discovered Penecilin" and the slightly more recent myth that "Fleming rediscovered it, but Duchesne discovered it first." The show presented the first of these as false, and the second as true, with a cut down version of the tale above.
However, knowing the format, I've a much better appreciation of why it works. When Fry says there'll be a round of obvious questions coming, and asks who discovered penicillin, and there's a pause, and Davies hesitates and buzzes[2], everyone knows he's going to say Fleming and it's going to be wrong. Fry knows it. He knows it. They know it. We know it. He just *can't resist*. And that's funny -- genuinely, it was hilarious.
Davies isn't exactly wrong. Certainly, Fleming did discover Penicillin, and only an incredibly precise level of pedantry would say that independently rediscovering it wasn't discovering it. However, the meta-story is that there's something more to the story, which Davies is genuinely ignorant of, and everyone knows that the score for the question really hangs on that, however precise.
But because this is implicit, someone watching is given the impression that "Fleming" is inherently a stupid or ignorant or incorrect answer to the question "Who discovered penicillin?" which is what's so offensive, and why I was so annoyed the first time I watched it.
I still think that's bad practice, to spread legends, but on the other hand the question last week wasn't actually indefensible, in that if Davies *had* said "50, of which 4 are commonwealths" he *would* have got a moral victory (whatever the score), and he lost points, not for knowing the correct answer, 50, but for not knowing the legend, which is implicitly the real question.
[1] I didn't know that. So apparently quantum leap was a lot more on target than I thought when the professor cures a plague by drinking distilled mould. Though I don't know if distilling would have made an orally-effective substance, it could do.
[2] Insofar as a buzzer calling "Hello, Sailor" is buzzing.
The questionable fact in this case involved the original discovery of penicillin, was it Duchesne rather than Fleming? Conveniently wikipedia describes the discoveries of penicillin before Fleming.
No, seriously. The page entitled Discoveries_of_anti-bacterial_effects_of_penicillium_moulds_before_Fleming
The situation seems to be:
* Lots of people including ancient greeks and 19-century "Arab stable boys" were aware that some moulds cured saddle sores and other infections[1].
* Several scientists, including Lister and Pasteur tried penicillum mould out
* Duchesne may have been the first to really study it, but the Institut Pasteur didn't accept any of his work.
* Fleming independently rediscovered it, and was the first to isolate the active ingredient, penicillin.
* It's slightly more complicated than that.
Thus, the traditional myth is "Fleming discovered Penecilin" and the slightly more recent myth that "Fleming rediscovered it, but Duchesne discovered it first." The show presented the first of these as false, and the second as true, with a cut down version of the tale above.
However, knowing the format, I've a much better appreciation of why it works. When Fry says there'll be a round of obvious questions coming, and asks who discovered penicillin, and there's a pause, and Davies hesitates and buzzes[2], everyone knows he's going to say Fleming and it's going to be wrong. Fry knows it. He knows it. They know it. We know it. He just *can't resist*. And that's funny -- genuinely, it was hilarious.
Davies isn't exactly wrong. Certainly, Fleming did discover Penicillin, and only an incredibly precise level of pedantry would say that independently rediscovering it wasn't discovering it. However, the meta-story is that there's something more to the story, which Davies is genuinely ignorant of, and everyone knows that the score for the question really hangs on that, however precise.
But because this is implicit, someone watching is given the impression that "Fleming" is inherently a stupid or ignorant or incorrect answer to the question "Who discovered penicillin?" which is what's so offensive, and why I was so annoyed the first time I watched it.
I still think that's bad practice, to spread legends, but on the other hand the question last week wasn't actually indefensible, in that if Davies *had* said "50, of which 4 are commonwealths" he *would* have got a moral victory (whatever the score), and he lost points, not for knowing the correct answer, 50, but for not knowing the legend, which is implicitly the real question.
[1] I didn't know that. So apparently quantum leap was a lot more on target than I thought when the professor cures a plague by drinking distilled mould. Though I don't know if distilling would have made an orally-effective substance, it could do.
[2] Insofar as a buzzer calling "Hello, Sailor" is buzzing.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-10 12:52 am (UTC)