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magical thyme

(14,881 posts)
15. They're entitled to their opinions...
Thu Nov 8, 2012, 06:33 AM
Nov 2012

and if that means we just continue along as if they don't exist, that is ok too. Our day will come.

A lot of breakthrough scientists are dissed early on, until the few that figure out a way to work with their ideas start showing results...

When I did my final microbiology presentation project on prions, my professor sat in the back of the room squirming in his seat, rolling his eyes and visibly struggling to keep from jumping up and shutting me down as I started with the "wrong" scientist hypothesizing a protein-based pathogen, and how she was ridiculed and dissed for proposing such an "impossible" scenario.

And then I jumped forward 15 years to the better known, high positioned, male scientist who proposed the identical hypothesis, cleverly named the malformed proteins "Prions" (the real acronym is proins, but that didn't sound good enough so he transposed the i and o) and won the Nobel prize for "his" ideas.

Suddenly the same professor who had taken pleasure in ridiculing me for a semester and could barely contain himself, shrank into his seat and looked like he wanted to crawl under the bench! He spent the rest of my presentation enthralled...and then terrified as I described the continued failed efforts to destroy these incredibly stable proteins that can't seem to be denatured no matter what the eff you do to them

Our day will come.

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