The myth of modern science, that it proceeds carefully, rationally, incrementally, building bit by bit from rock-solid foundations to impregnable fortresses of fact, comes unraveled in contemporary neuroscience. Fortresses, entire kingdoms of neuroscience have been built on what turn out to be frail premises that get swept away entirely when the next new thing comes along.
A few years ago, a huge amount of effort was spent researching the then-thought marvelous qualities of a humble molecule called nitric oxide. This molecule, better-known in the broader world as the key element in laughing gas, was celebrated as a vital actor in human memory and cognition.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, August 21, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part Page News Desk 3 inches; 118 words Type of Material: Correction
Chasing memory: An article in Monday's Section A about UC Irvine neuroscientist Gary Lynch's research into memory said nitric oxide was a key element in laughing gas. It is not; nitrous oxide is what makes up laughing gas. Also, the glossary accompanying the memory articles in Sunday and Monday's Section A defined genes as "strings of amino acids that make up an organism's genome, a sort of blueprint from which the organism is built. Individual genes are strings of amino acids; each string contains instructions for building a particular protein." The definition should have said: "Genes: strings of DNA that form a blueprint from which the organism is built. Each gene contains instructions for building a particular protein."
Science Magazine, as if honoring a rock star or president, put the thing on its cover and declared it Molecule of the Year.
By the end of the next year, nitric oxide had fallen off the end of the Earth. Little of what had been claimed on its behalf turned out to be true. This was but one example in a long, sad tradition of a science, as if gripped by mass hysteria, going off the deep end and pretending it knew how to swim.
There was no guarantee, neuroscientist Gary Lynch liked to say, that something was important just because you happened to study it.
"You always imagine those animals out in a herd, the wildebeests -- they're running along, and a lion jumps up and takes out this guy named Clyde," Lynch said. And the world proceeds as if Clyde never happened. "They don't talk about Clyde anymore. It's just not good form to talk about him."
Lynch, who runs a lab at UC Irvine, has spent three decades studying a phenomenon known within neuroscience as long-term potentiation, or LTP, which can be very loosely defined as a process in which electrical stimulation strengthens connections between brain cells. Lynch had taken up the study of LTP because it had characteristics strikingly similar to human learning and memory. It seemed to take place in parts of the brain where memory was thought to occur, and like memory, it occurred in an instant and could last a lifetime.
The practical reality of memory -- that human beings, from very young ages on, learn and store information -- had been established and studied for millenniums. How it happened, however, remained a dark continent yet to be mapped.
