Question

The work of Alexander Fleming shows that ____.

A) lab accidents can be very dangerous

B) Results need to be confirmed by other scientists

C) Not all scientific knowledge begins with an experiment

D) It is extremely important to control your experiment properly ​

Answer 1

C

Step-by-step explanation:

My science test told me so.

Answer 2

Answer: C) Not all scientific knowledge begins with an experiment

Step-by-step explanation:

Fleming's lab was very messy, and one day when he is back from his vacations, he noticed that a colony of a fungus had grown as a contaminant on one of the Petri dishes sown with a bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus. Fleming observed a bacterial lysis, which means the death of the bacteria.

The dishes got contaminated by Penicillium, which is a mold that produces a an antibacterial substance, called penicillin. This is an antibiotic that attacks a wide range of bacteria.

At first, his findings were underestimated and he was not able to isolate this penicillin. But in 1940, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain found out that this antibiotic could be used as a therapeutic agent to fight bacteria.

So, in this case the discovery of penicillin was accidental, without planning a specific experiment.