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 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 12:15 am (UTC)A more charitable way to view it would be to say that they're not trying to claim the alternative answer is the wholly correct one, merely to demonstrate that things are more complicated than you were taught in school, which isn't inherently a bad thing.
People don't go away with that impression of course, the go away with the impression that every word Stephen Fry says is correct (quite a lot of people seem to assume that Fry actually knows it all himself, rather than reading cards prepared by researchers). This is bad of course, but it doesn't seem to be any worse than someone blindly trusting Snopes or Wikipedia as a single source. Fundamentally nobody has the time to fully research every idea that's knocking about in their heads, so we have to live with the fact that some of it will be unsubstantiated legend.
FWIW, I think life makes a whole lot more sense if you assume that TV will *never* be informative and that whatever purpose it serves is only for mindless entertainment. Obviously this is overstating the case a bit, but it seems better to err on the side of favouring other media (where there is a plentiful supply of good informative content) than to seek information where none is to be found.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-09 02:18 pm (UTC)I've got to say, I've known times when they've got things wrong 0 both on the TV show and especially in the Telegraph QI column (Saturday in the Weekend supplement). But I understand where they're coming from. It's kind of about being critical enough to question popular 'facts' - it's just a shame that sometimes that comes across as saying, "No, it's *this* 'fact' instead."
no subject
Date: 2008-02-10 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-10 12:48 am (UTC)Yes, well put! *hug* That, exactly.
(BTW, is the "0" a typo, or something I don't understand?)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-10 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-10 02:17 pm (UTC)*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2008-02-10 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-10 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-10 10:14 pm (UTC)