I play with microbes. There are, of course, many rules to this play...but when you have acquired knowledge and experience it is very pleasant to break the rules and to be able to find something nobody has thought of.
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"Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy."
"The early days of penicillin were full of disappointments, but we never gave up."
"It is the common lot of discoverers to be misunderstood."
"It was not easy to convince people of the importance of penicillin in the early days."
"It is not wise to use penicillin as a prophylactic against every little infection."
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True expertise earns the right to deviate from convention. Once you deeply understand the rules governing a field, intentional rule-breaking becomes a legitimate path to discovery. Rigid adherence to established methods produces predictable results; creative deviation, grounded in real knowledge, opens doors to findings no one anticipated. Expertise isn't about following protocols forever — it's the foundation that makes productive rebellion possible.
Fleming's entire career embodied this philosophy. His 1928 penicillin discovery came precisely from breaking the rule of discarding contaminated cultures — he noticed mold killing bacteria on a plate others would have thrown away. His bacteriology work was famously playful; he grew microbe 'paintings' in petri dishes. His Nobel-winning breakthrough was accidental observation enabled by curiosity, not protocol.
Fleming worked through the early 20th century when laboratory medicine was rigidly systematizing itself — germ theory was new, antiseptics were gospel, and scientific method meant strict reproducibility. WWI's mass casualties from infected wounds created urgent pressure to find better treatments. Against this backdrop of institutional methodology and desperate medical need, Fleming's willingness to follow anomalies rather than discard them proved revolutionary.
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