On the exploitation of serendipity in drug discovery

We have written previously about the nature of serendipity and the role that it played in the “Psychopharmacology Revolution” of the 1950s and 1960s [1-3]. However, we have not previously addressed the issue of whether it is possible or desirable to design studies to enhance and exploit serendipity. We do so here. First, it is essential to establish a definition of serendipity. As we suggested previously [1], the term serendipity shall be defined as “the discovery of something not sought”. This definition, like most others, requires the element of sagacity. The observation of “something not sought” will not lead to discovery unless someone has the mental discernment (sagacity) required to recognize that the observation has significance. However, sagacity cannot be used to differentiate serendipitous from non-serendipitous discoveries because it is a necessary attribute of both. Sagacity and discovery are synonyms in this contex

A characterization of the Petersen−type geometry of the McLaughlin group

The McLaughlin sporadic simple group McL is the flag-transitive automorphism group of a Petersen-type geometry g=g(McL) with the diagram where the edge in the middle indicates the geometry of vertices and edges of the Petersen graph. The elements corresponding to the nodes from the left to the right on the diagram P_3^3 are called points, lines, triangles and planes, respectively. The residue in g of a point is the P^3-geometry g(Mat22) of the Mathieu group of degree 22 and the residue of a plane is the P^3-geometry g(Alt7) of the alternating group of degree 7. The geometries g(Mat22) and g(Alt7) possess 3-fold covers g(3Mat22) and g(3Alt7) which are known to be universal. In this paper we show that g is simply connected and construct a geometry g ̃ which possesses a 2-covering onto g. The automorphism group of g ̃ is of the form 323McL; the residues of a point and a plane are isomorphic to g(3Mat22) and g(3Alt7), respectively. Moreover, we reduce the classification problem of all flag-transitive P_n^m-geometries with n, m ≥ 3 to the calculation of the universal cover of g ̃.Published versio

Toward standardized usage of the word serendipity in the historiography of psychopharmacology

Contradictory views are expressed in the literature about the role played by serendipity in discoveries that led to modern psychopharmacology. This article attempts to resolve these contradictions by providing an operational definition of serendipity. The utility of the proposed definition is explored in the context of 18 discoveries. The results show that the most common pattern in the development of early psychiatric medications is serendipitous observation leading to non-serendipitous demonstration of clinical utility. The analysis also reveals examples of relatively pure serendipitous and non-serendipitous discoveries. The proposed definition appears to be reliable and valid