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Ulcers: Curiosity In Science

Decent Essays

Curiosity in Science
Before 1982, everyone “knew” ulcers came from stress, so they didn’t want to look further into the cause of ulcers. In 1982, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren challenged the belief by saying ulcers were caused from bacteria. This shows that we have a problem with science; we began to believe that we know everything about something but in reality we didn’t. Descartes, French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist believed that should not accept something true unless definitively proven true. Science knows that we have this problem with this but it comes from the push to always having them succeed. Before knowing that the Helicobacter Pylori bacteria caused ulcers, people believed ulcers were known to be caused from stress. They refused to believe it was caused from anything else because they believed that no bacteria could thrive in the highly acidic environment of the stomach. There are links going back to 1940 by Dr. A. Stone Freedberg, who was a cardiologist at Harvard, but his boss pressured him to abandon his research and he favored him to do research in something that would be “easier to prove”. Many scientists gave up on this research is due to the overwhelming opposition from the wider scientific community. …show more content…

At the time suggesting that ulcers weren’t caused from stress was considered as career suicide. They we’re able to gain funding to help continue their research to prove that it was caused by the Helicobacter Pylori bacteria. Their work was continuously rejected for publication and they received constant criticism. The scientific community believed that the conclusions that they made we’re all premature and were not well supported. In June 1984, Barry Marshall tested it on himself and was able to prove that the Helicobacter Pylori bacteria is indeed the cause of

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