Sir Peter Medawar experimentally demonstrated immunological tolerance through his tissue transplantation experiment in the early and mid-1950s. He made a central contribution to modern biomedicine by showing that genetically distinct cells introduced into a body during its foetal phase could not only be permanently tolerated but also make the host accept any subsequent skin grafts from the original cell donors. However, this discovery had only a limited clinical applicability. None could practise Medawar's method on human foetuses in preparation for their future need for organ or skin transplantation. I analyse this problem by focusing on his management of 'failures' during the tissue transplantation experiments. Through statistical, material, theoretical and rhetorical strategies, he managed unsatisfactory findings of his research, including unexpected skin infection, sudden animal death and irregularities in homograft survival times. I argue that these strategies and their inherent ambiguities constituted the course of Medawar's research, enabling him to delineate the temporal dimensions of tolerance and a clinical relevance, which were mutually contradictory. This paper thus illustrates the multiple roles that failures play in scientific research as well as the conflicting outcomes of investigators' efforts to manage them.

中文翻译：

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管理失败：彼得·布莱恩·梅达沃爵士的移植研究。

Peter Medawar 爵士在 20 世纪 50 年代初和中期通过组织移植实验证明了免疫耐受性。他对现代生物医学做出了重要贡献，表明在胎儿阶段引入体内的遗传独特的细胞不仅可以永久耐受，而且可以使宿主接受来自原始细胞捐赠者的任何后续皮肤移植。然而，这一发现的临床适用性有限。没有人能够在人类胎儿身上实践梅达沃的方法，为他们未来需要器官或皮肤移植做准备。我通过关注他在组织移植实验期间对“失败”的处理来分析这个问题。通过统计、材料、理论和修辞策略，他处理了研究中令人不满意的结果，包括意外的皮肤感染、动物突然死亡和同种移植物存活时间的不规律。我认为这些策略及其固有的模糊性构成了梅达沃的研究过程，使他能够描绘出耐受性和临床相关性的时间维度，而这两者是相互矛盾的。因此，本文阐述了失败在科学研究中发挥的多重作用，以及研究者管理失败的努力的相互矛盾的结果。