"The heroes of the stories told in this book," he writes, "are not scientists who merely plodded rationally from point A to point B, but rather those who came upon X in the course of looking for Y, and saw its potential usefulness, in some cases to a field other than their own."
Consider some of the most groundbreaking, and lifesaving, medical discoveries that were Eureka moments - the X found on the path toward Y: X-rays, penicillin, chemotherapy drugs, and treatments for syphilis, schizophrenia, depression, lymphoma, leukemia, tuberculosis, ulcers and erectile dysfunction. These medical breakthroughs were all found by people looking for something else, usually by people Meyers calls "mavericks" - scientists, doctors, researchers and sometimes even amateurs not at the center of their respective fields of study.
Take ulcers. Doctors long believed they were caused by stress and diet. When Barry Marshall, along with J. Robin Warren, put forth - based on sound evidence found by mistake - that he believed ulcers were caused by bacteria, he was called a "madman." Marshall had to make himself sick by drinking the bacteria to prove he was right.
Meyers sets out to make telling these stories the anti-medical paper, injecting information about these mavericks' lives. But the pacing doesn't always flow, with three- and four-page chapters wedged in between longer passages. Meyers is at his best when he takes his time in telling of greater discoveries - his section on penicillin is brilliant and witty. But the shorter snippets, even if the discoveries found within were important, seem tacked on, and they interrupt the narrative.
