Word: dogma
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...First Vatican Council. Yet, as it turned out, it had less effect at the time than was expected. There were few immediate consequences: Great Britain's Prime Minister William Gladstone grumbled that the Pope was trying to revive "universal monarchy"; Germany's Otto von Bismarck used the dogma as a pretext for his anti-Catholic Kulturkampf (struggle for civilization); a group of Catholics in Central Europe formed the schismatic Old Catholic Church partly in rebellion against the doctrine...
...more than a decade, most scientists have accepted the "central dogma" of molecular biology without question. Stated simply, that dogma holds that the heredity information in living cells is always passed along in the same direction: from the "double helix" DNA molecule to the single-stranded messenger RNA molecule, which in turn directs the synthesis of protein-which is essential to all life. Since the end of May, however, investigators at three separate laboratories have stunned the scientific community by revealing that the central dogma is contradicted by the activities of cancer-producing viruses...
...dogma was challenged experimentally in 1964, when Howard Temin of the University of Wisconsin suggested that certain viruses consisting of only RNA and a protein sheath may cause cancer by making their own DNA once they invade a host cell. This new DNA would then become permanently incorporated in the host cell, giving orders for the production of cancerous cells and more cancer-producing viruses...
Invading Viruses. Teminism, as the theory came to be called, received little support from other scientists; it suggested that RNA could pass genetic information along to DNA, a clear reversal of accepted dogma. But Temin refused to abandon his idea. He knew that tumor-causing RNA viruses somehow inject their deadly message permanently into the host cell; otherwise, the cancer would not be passed on during cell division to future generations of cells. Yet the invading viruses carry with them no DNA of their own. Therefore, Temin reasoned, they must somehow make DNA after invading the host cell. The only...
...much is wrong, even with Pifer's attack. An early clue is that a good deal of the author's satire of American manners has the unmistakable staleness of frozen dogma. "The American businessman who takes his wife to dinner is in trouble if he's in Europe. He can't follow the conversation. Rodin, Caravageio, Proudhon, who the hell are they?" This is like mocking the tail fins on American cars. It would be entirely possible to write a damaging satire of U.S. businessmen in Europe, but they don't have tail fins...