Thread by @VikiLovesFACS

By popular demand (weirdly!) a thread I wrote a while ago is now an opinion piece in @OUPAcademic Oxford Open Immunology. But I’m here to tell you that now I think what I said in the thread was wrong… 🧵

academic.oup.com/ooim/advance-a…

Back in August, I got involved in a conversation with @notimmuneatall about reproductive immunology, which devolved into a critique of Medawar’s 1953 lecture on “the immunological paradox of pregnancy” 2/

https://twitter.com/VikiLovesFACS/status/1290411571320098817?s=20

A few people got in touch saying they would like to see the thread developed into something more citeable. But I was only just back on my feet after months of homeschooling by day/science by night, so I thought: no way! 3/

But then @OUPAcademic Oxford Open Immunology got in touch looking for articles for their first issue, and I thought: why not? 4/

How hard could it be? These are discussions I have with my students all the time! The article would practically write itself! If anything it would be labour-SAVING as in future I could just send them the article and have done! 5/

But actually, this turned out to be the hardest piece of writing I have ever done. 6/

Partly, that was because (together with editor @Daltmann10) I decided to take a historical approach. And I’m no historian! Making judgements about why people thought what they thought is so far outside my comfort zone, it was in a different dialling code. 7/

But mostly it was difficult because my thread and those discussions I had been having with my students were all *wrong*. 8/

I had blamed Medawar for the ways in which his ideas about the immunological paradox of pregnancy have been used, but when it went back to the text of his lecture it was all completely… reasonable. 9/

Certainly in the context of its time, and some of it even in the context of what we know now. 10/

In the years since I had read it myself, I had read so many essays and reviews that started from what “Medawar had proposed” that I had forgotten what he *actually* proposed. I started to feel like this paper had become almost an oral tradition. 11/

But why? 12/

I think it’s partly because of how difficult it is to get hold of the text. The copyright is held by @Co_Biologists and I have written to them to ask if, as a service to immunologists, they would consider making this seminal text openly available. 13/

I haven’t heard back from them yet, but rest assured that if they agree, I will let you know! And we will link my opinion piece to the original text. But in the meantime, anyone who is interested will have to make do with the opinion piece 😉 \thread

academic.oup.com/ooim/advance-a…