There is no doubt that many research conclusions are generated through a series of logical, reasoned steps and arduous hours of writing and experimentation. The inspiring effects of serendipitous happenings upon research do not eliminate the prerequisites of toil and rigour, but losing one’s ‘bearings’ can push the researcher into new territory in which to apply his or her efforts. Occasionally, ‘happy accidents’ can lead to conclusions that might never have otherwise been revealed.
A startling example of a chance event changing accepted knowledge concerns the discovery of Charon, the largest moon of Pluto. In 1978, astronomer James Christy was inspecting magnified images of the dwarf planet on photographic plates, and purportedly was about to discard what initially appeared to him to be a defective plate when some of his equipment failed. Legend has it that while the machine was undergoing repair, Christy was afforded time to examine the plate again and to compare it with the existing archive. The ‘defect’ on the plate seemed to be a bulge in the planet, which appeared periodically in images from previous years. Further work permitted Christy to eliminate all other possibilities and confirm the existence of a moon orbiting Pluto.
The late Isaac Asimov, both an author and a biochemist, remarked: ‘The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!”, but “That’s funny”.’ (I can imagine Christy muttering the same words when he spied an unusual blob on an image of Pluto.) Touching upon the manner in which researchers do not always set out knowing what they will find, Asimov gestures toward the way in which unusual, unexpected results can prompt further research that is truly innovative. In this edition of Traffic, we see how a single blue dot found near the brain of a fruitfly larva changed the course of Henry Chung’s PhD research from the study of jumping genes and regulation of a single gene to the expressional characterisation of the entire family of genes.
Investigating a topic in part because of a coincidence or accident is exemplified by Georgie Boucher’s analysis of the transience of images in Francesca Woodman’s photography: her research was partly inspired by a conversation with a friend while travelling overseas. The connections that Daniel Fleming identifies between Motown Records and Martin Luther King, coupled with his analysis of the suspicion of King’s communist leanings, were enabled by the discovery of FBI files on microfilm. His experience is somewhat mirrored by the emergence from private hands of archival material on famed Victorian writer Oscar Wilde, which facilitated Nick Frigo’s examination of Wilde’s lecture tour of America in 1882 and his construction as a ‘celebrity’. Similarly, a National Archives catalogue search led Georgia Shiells to uncover a bizarre board game entitled ‘The White Australia Game’, a find that prompted some searching questions about what ‘whiteness’ meant to Australians in the early-twentieth century.
Fluctuations in societal thought can also create serendipitous moments for particular research topics. For example, Daniel Whyte argues that societal beliefs, politics, the economy and technology have contributed to the re-emergence of the issue of ‘genetic race’ in the scientific mainstream at the beginning of the new millennium. Both political and environmental context impacted upon Deb Anderson’s fieldwork documenting oral histories of rural Australians’ lived experience of drought. An unexpected delay in her research allowed her to witness a dramatic shift in public opinion about climate change as the real effects of drought and natural disasters began to hit home for all Australians. Timing is also an important element in Rose Michael’s proposition for the use and misuse of genre. She reinterprets accepted ideas about genre and argues that playing with the manufacture and marketing of literary fiction may be essential to addressing the current decline of the literary in Australian publishing.
Bioelectricity, vaccination, X-rays, inkjet printers (in an accident involving a soldering iron and a pen), Post-It notes, the chemical structure of cyclic compounds, Bose-Einstein statistics, and major concepts such as the nature of gravitation (Isaac Newton’s apple falling from a tree) and specific gravity (Archimedes’ observation of the way his body displaced water from his bath), were either discovered or inspired by serendipitous events. Yet, as the articles published in this ninth edition of Traffic demonstrate, not only do ‘inventions’ sometimes come about by accident, but a whole series of chance factors may lead us to our research topic at a particular time and place in history.
-Michelle Smith