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A clunky scientific instrument turned into one made of paper, something in the venom of a snail turned into a potent painkiller, and an accidental laser to the eye turned into a treatment for sight.

These are the weird and wonderful eureka moments acknowledged in the 2022 Golden Goose Awards.

The three teams of scientists who took home this year’s honours all have one thing in common – their projects were accidental but pioneering breakthroughs, per CNN.

“The Golden Goose Award reminds us that potential discoveries could be hidden in every corner,” said Sudip S. Parikh, the chief executive officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which organises the awards.

The awards also “illustrate the benefits of investing in basic research to propel innovation” and drive home the point that it is worth investing in scientific research that might not immediately pay off.

Let’s meet the winning scientists. First up, is a powerful microscope made from paper called a Foldscope:

 

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Stanford University bioengineer Manu Prakash is pictured all the way at the top with his creation, which he came up with more than a decade ago while in the Thai jungle on a field trip for his research into rabies:

“I saw this $50,000 microscope in a jungle in the middle of nowhere, locked in a room. It was an ironic moment. I could see immediately it wasn’t the right tool,” said Prakash, an associate professor and senior fellow at the university’s Woods Institute for the Environment.

He quickly innovated a cheaper, easier-to-use flat-packed microscope made from paper and a single ball lens at about 140x, powerful enough to see a malaria parasite in a cell.

Of course, with any cool breakthrough, there were the doubters, but Prakash pushed through the funding hurdles and fast-forward to 2022, the Foldscope is “bring[ing] science into everyone’s hands” at the fraction of the cost of a huge lab microscope.

Biochemists Baldomero Olivera and Lourdes Cruz’s side-hustle turned into a fruitful discovery:

They were initially scientists working in the Philippines in the 1970s and struggled to come up with the right supplies and “fancy equipment” required for DNA research.

So they decided to get creative and turned to a common creature of the Philippines, the cone snail, which paralyses prey with its venom.

Long story short, they eventually found that one of the compounds in the venom, known as omega-conotoxin, led to the development of a potent pain reliever, ziconotide, commercially known as Prialt.

This discovery has transformed neuroscience and is on its way to treating things like addiction, epilepsy, and diabetes.

Last but surely not least, a little-known lab accident that contributed to the development of the now world-renowned laser procedure used to correct vision problems and allow people to ditch glasses for good.

You must have heard of LASIK:

In the early 1990s, Detao Du, a grad student at the University of Michigan in the lab of Gérard Mourou, a French physicist and professor, accidentally took a laser to the eye when he lifted his goggles.

Anyway, that bit of exposure led to experimenting and research, which allowed Du and co. to team up with other researchers already investigating lasers to correct vision, which eventually led to the corrective eye surgery we know today.

[source:cnn]