Unexpected Results Are Not Junk—They Might Be a Scientific Breakthrough

Researchers often conduct experiments with detailed planning and careful analysis. When encountering unexpected results, they may consider the experiment a failure and begin searching for alternatives or troubleshooting the issue. However, history has shown us many stories where researchers chose to investigate the causes of their unexpected results rather than discard them, leading to groundbreaking innovations in fields such as drug discovery and optical techniques.

I will start with a very inspiring story: the discovery of a famous antibiotic, penicillin. Who hasn’t been prescribed penicillin at some point? The discovery of penicillin has saved millions of lives, and its story serves as a valuable lesson for new researchers: unexpected results can lead to groundbreaking discoveries. In 1928, Alexander Fleming, a Scottish bacteriologist, was conducting experiments on Staphylococcus, a gram-positive bacteria. During a vacation, he accidentally left some Petri dishes of the bacteria unattended. Upon his return, Fleming found that a mold (Penicillium notatum) had contaminated one of the plates and inhibited the growth of the bacteria around it. Instead of ignoring the incident because it was unexpected, he was curious to understand what happened. He found that the mold produced a chemical substance that not only protected it from the bacteria but also killed the bacteria. Fleming named this substance Penicillin.

A sample of Penicillium notatum mold gifted by Alexander Fleming to a colleague at St Marys Hospital. Image Credit: https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co425922/penicillium-mould-presented-by-alexander-fleming

Another example of how a researcher's curiosity led to the discovery of a breakthrough in molecular analytical techniques is the discovery of the Raman effect. In the same year, in 1928, Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, an Indian physicist, and his student K.S. Krishnan studied how light interacts with transparent material using sunlight as the light source. They noticed something unusual: some of the scattered light shifted in wavelength after interacting with the molecules in the liquid. They investigated this unexpected result further and discovered what is now known as the Raman effect, which forms the basis of Raman spectroscopy. Nowadays, Raman spectroscopy is one of the major optical techniques that is used as an analytical technique in chemistry, biology, and material science for identifying substances at the molecular level.

To conclude, these two stories show that unexpected results are not always the result of failed experiments. Instead of discarding these results, we should understand them, as they might guide us to groundbreaking scientific discoveries.

Written by Saqer Al Abdullah, 4th year PhD candidate in the NBI Lab

February 21, 2025