The arbitrary nature of science yields astonishing and surprising results

There is a so-called "Eureka moment" in the film about the discovery of DNA, when the British scientists Francis Crick and James Watson realise that the structure of DNA must be a double helix: the sudden glint of realisation, the run up the stairs, the hurried building of the model. What is not celebrated in that or many other accounts of that episode is all the other people who also worked on the project in one way or another, the wrong turns they and hundreds of others took, the frustration that it caused. The image is that it's all a blinding flash; the reality is that science is a gradual, grinding process.

That's easily forgotten in a world where we want rapid results, and answers that will fit neatly into a soundbite. We find it easy to criticise (or at least grumble) when the question "are genetically modified foods safe?" is met with what seem like evasive answers, of "no verifiable results" from the scientists we expect to be omniscient.

Again, the reality is that science has to be a painstaking process where nothing is taken for granted. The most interesting – and disruptive yet ultimately useful – breakthroughs come when researchers don't take things for granted, when they look at the results of their experiments and see not mistakes to be thrown away, but the clues to a hidden message.

Such was the case with the discovery of penicillin, which famously began with a petri dish contaminated after a window was left open. Alexander Fleming noticed how the bacteria were being killed off around the fungi that had breezed in. That was the kernel of his discovery.

Similarly, a refusal to dismiss a surprising finding lies at the heart of the discoveries that we detail in our news pages today. Professor Richard Jorgensen tried to make petunias more purple by giving them an extra set of "purple-making" genes – and instead found they came up white, or variegated. From there it has been a long road, but we may now have something that could lead to treatment for Aids and other viruses, and cancer.

It was an unexpected finding; but then, as Lewis Wolpert says, the key aspect of science is that it is counter-intuitive. His example: hold a bullet in one hand and a loaded gun in the other; fire the gun, horizontally, as you drop the bullet. Which bullet hits the ground first? Neither: gravity acts the same on both. (But please, as with nuclear fission, don't try this at home.)

Yet amid all this knowledge and discovery, and despite the Government's latest injection of cash for the science sector, we have fewer teachers and fewer students in these subjects. People would rather watch Big Brother, a sort of human petri dish, than learn about the changes that are driving change in the world around them. That is frustrating for dedicated scientists, who can't understand the public's lack of interest in their work. And, in a world where accountants wield the same power to choke investigation that was once gifted to kings, the timescales that science works to are beyond the pale. Professor Jorgensen published his first results on petunias in 1990; only now has our knowledge caught up with his findings. Compare that to the five-year payback that most companies demand.

Professor Jorgensen's work shows that research, if given time and the facilities and support it needs, can yield the most startling and potentially beneficial of results. It is an outstanding example of why nobody should turn down the chance to invest in pure science if that could one day lead to a treatment for cancer or Aids or many other less serious human ailments. We wish Professor Jorgensen the best with the next stage of his work.