[kieranmaine]

> The window quibble, the incubator gap, and the replication protocol do not touch the central, uncontested fact that chance contamination plus observational curiosity gave medicine its first antibiotic.

This is the same conclusion as the article. IMO, the importance of challenging the myth is that it has hisotrically taken precendence over your (and the article's) conclusion.

FTA

> Fleming’s 1929 penicillin paper may have been written as a linear process, but that’s almost certainly not how the discovery occurred. And by eliminating these complicated twists and turns, Fleming inadvertently obscured what may be one of the most important lessons in scientific history: how combining a meticulous research program with the openness to branch out into new directions led him to Nobel Prize-winning success. Neither rigid plans nor the winds of chance are enough on their own; discovery requires both.

[NetMageSCW]

I think that the author had the conclusion wanted before picking the story that supported the desired conclusion as best. To me that story overlooks too many documented facts as well as human behavior. They complain that it requires lottery odds for the first story to happen while ignoring that one win is documented - there was a cold snap exactly when Fleming we t on vacation. Both stories require the winning odds of the mold contaminating a culture - the mold wouldn’t have needed to be identified if Fleming was deliberately experimenting with a known mold from his colleague. So the only undocumented luck left would be the use of that contaminated culture just before vacation.

And which is more likely - Fleming imagining the initial discovery happening right as he returned from vacation or that he remembered those important details but forgot more minor ones?