In 2003, biophysicist and Nobel Laureate Maurice Wilkins published his autobiography entitled The Third Man. In the preface, he diffidently points out that the title  was chosen by his publisher, as a reference to the famous 1949 movie no doubt, featuring Orson Welles in his classical role as penicillin racketeer Harry Lime. In this paper I intend to show that there is much more to this title than merely its familiar ring. If subjected to a  comparative analysis, multiple correspondences between movie and memoirs can be brought to the fore. Taken together, these documents shed an intriguing light on the vicissitudes of budding life sciences research during the post-war era. I will focus my comparative analysis on issues still relevant today, such as dual use, the handling of sensitive scientific information  and, finally, on the interwovenness of science and warfare (i.e. the ‘militarisation’ of research and the relationship between beauty and destruction). Thus, I will explain how science autobiographies on the one hand and genres of the imagination (such as novels and movies) on the other may deepen our comprehension of tensions and dilemmas of life sciences research then and now. For that reason, science autobiographies can provide valuable input  for teaching philosophy and history of science to science students. The Third Man, released on September 2, 1949, is regarded by many as one of the greatest cinema classics of all time.The Third Man of the Double Helix The title of this book, More than half a century later, in 2003, the autobiography of Maurice Wilkins (1916–2004) was published (shortly before his death), entitled In other words, the book begins with a disclaimer: with an author discarding the title of his own book as arbitrary and external, apparently selected because of its catchy familiarity; because of the film no doubt,Yet, as I will argue in this paper, there is much more to the book’s title than its familiar ring. First of all, both events (the making of the movie and the complicated process which led up to the discovery of DNA) coincide in time; they belong to one and the same period: the post-war years, an era during which academics, not in the least Nobel Laureates, and notably physicists  tended to reflect quite extensively on their societal role as scientists. Had their discoveries indeed conferred ‘benefit on mankind’, as it is so elegantly phrased in Alfred Nobel’s Will?4Moreover, to the extent that the book’s title was indeed an embarrassment to its author, this only makes it all the more interesting because, as we will see, a whole series of ‘embarrassments’ are recorded in Wilkin’s memoirs. Indeed, one could argue that ‘embarrassment’ functions as the book’s typical mood, something comparable to nausea in the case of Sartre, boredom in the case of Heidegger and discontent in the case of Freud. Most if not all of the scientific highlights recorded in Wilkin’s autobiography are accompanied by instances of (at times profound) embarrassment. And Wilkins himself admits as much when he quickly adds (right after the disclaimer quoted above) that the title “does resonate with some of the tensions, accusations, confusions and controversies that have attended the telling and retelling of the DNA story” (p. x).In fact, the more we dive into the movie (and the novel) on the one hand and Wilkins’s scientific memoirs on the other, the more their congruencies begin to multiply. In other words, although at first glance , any further connections seem unlikely, on closer inspection, a detailed ‘comparative analysis’ of the documents reveals that their family likeness is actually quite significant. In many ways, they address similar themes, conflicts, ambivalences and hopes, so that the movie/novel elucidates some of the key motifs in the autobiography and vice versa. Taken together, these documents provide a window into the socio-cultural ambiance of post-war cutting-edge molecular life sciences research, focussing on DNA.But before turning to the details of my analysis, let me first address the question why I find it relevant to study science autobiographies such as Wilkins’s memoirs in the first place and, subsequently, why comparisons with movies  can be helpful for our purposes.in action), in science studies as a research field (notably during the past decades) autobiographical sources tended to be regarded with suspicion. And this has been the case, one could argue, for two reasons: on the one hand because they are auto-biographical and on the other hand because they are auto-biographical.Science autobiography is a genre of writing with a long history. Many scientists, notably prominent ones (‘aristocrats of science’) have written memoirs, from concise fragments up to voluminous monographs . But although autobiographical sources often contain a wealth of data concerning science as a ‘practice’  consider biased or damaging to themselves. Thus, science autobiographies can hardly be regarded as impartial. But the wide-spread reluctance to making use of autobiographical sources in science research goes much further and is actually fuelled by scepticism towards biographical  approaches derqvist  has arguderqvist , formed One important causal factor was that scientific ‘life writing’ had become associated with the ‘great men’ or ‘heroes of science’ approach, discredited for various  reasons. Especially during the 1970s and 1980s, science studies as a research field opted for a sociological rather than a psychological  stance. Scientific research was no longer seen as the work of individuals, but rather of networks, even of ‘actor networks’ in the Latourian sense (including both human and non-human ‘actants’). Thus, the “dismissal” of biography as a credible and usable source seemed an inevitable methodological implication of the broader sociological dismissal of the individual as a legitimate focus of research in science studies as such , various scientific breakthroughs (from the discovery of the DNA structure in 1953 up to the Human Genome Project in the 1990s) have given rise to a plethora of science autobiographies, as a ‘by-product’ of life sciences knowledge production . Rather than presenting science as a linear progress, both auto- and hetero-biographical sources inform us about flashes of intuition, lucky breaks, missed opportunities and fatal turns  as a means for understanding science-in-the-making; (3) as an effort to promote popular understanding of science; (4) as belles-lettres; (5) as public commemoration (eulogy); (6) as a labour of love; and finally (7) as an exercise in research ethics. With the exception of (5) and (6), these answers apply to autobiographies as well. In this paper, however, I will notably focus on (1) and (7). First of all, autobiographies tend to portray scientists as worldly beings whose laboratory practices resonate with evolving socio-cultural tendencies in the world at large. Thus, Wilkins’s memoirs will be used to contextualise post-war biophysics (culminating in the discovery of DNA) vis-a-vis contemporaneous developments in other socio-cultural domains. Furthermore, Wilkins’s memoirs provide us with intriguing source material for ethical reflection, not in the sense that the author is a role-model or ‘exemplar’ , nor in order to expose a famous scientist as a misconducting, plagiarising fraud (the ‘debunking’ approach to life writing), but rather in the sense that his memoirs have something important to say  about the moral dilemmas scientists come to face, as well as about the strategies they develop for dealing with them. In other words, in autobiographies, laboratory life emerges as a practice of the self, as an instance of ‘individuation’, while the process of writing memoirs itself may be regarded as a crucial component of the individuation process.Up to a certain point, the relevance and value of science Beckwith . SöderqvBeckwith , 2011 diA final reason for becoming interested in science autobiographies is that, for me as a continental philosopher of science, psychoanalysis is an important source of inspiration, a key component of my conceptual frame of reference. And seen from a psychoanalytical perspective, science autobiographies present ‘case studies’, not in the traditional ‘pathographical’ sense of the term (with scientists featuring as patients tormented by various neurotic symptoms), but rather in the sense that these self-portrayals give voice to the fascinations, inspirations, flaws, obstacles and challenges of researchers working in a particular socio-cultural ambiance,—provided these documents are read in a particular way and from a particular angle. In this paper, Wilkins’s memoirs will be analysed from an ‘oblique’ perspective, in the sense that the focus will not be on the scientific details as such , but rather on the existential tensions and conflicts of Wilkins as a successful but at the same time tormented researcher (the ‘micro’ level), as well as on the various connections between scientific problems and broader socio-cultural challenges (the ‘macro’ level).The Third Man as a cinematic classic can prove revealing. The doubts, controversies and challenges of Wilkins as a prominent scientist—meticulously articulated in his  autobiographical account—in many ways reflect the broader conflicts, doubts and challenges of a whole era: the post-war context, as captured by the classic movie. For although the autobiography purports to be ‘realistic’, while the movie purports to be ‘fictional’, both sources provide a window into a particular socio-cultural environment: post-war Europe during the late 1940s and early 1950s .It is against this backdrop that a systematic comparison with My comparative analysis involves a number of successive steps. First, I will focus on the connection between science and warfare (between science and the death drive so to speak), especially during the post-war years. After pointing out important similarities in terms of ambiance (between Lime’s Vienna and Wilkins’s London), I will zoom in on two congruous scientific developments that played a significant role in the allied war effort, although initially they may seem unconnected: on the one hand quantum physics and the Manhattan Project, on the other hand the discovery and large-scale production of penicillin. Whereas in the first case the darker, demonic aspect of scientific progress seems obvious, the second development had its collateral damage as well, notably in the form of black markets and clandestine sales. In both cases, the societal profile of science proved fairly ambiguous. Subsequently, attention will shift from the  ‘object’ of research  to the tormented ‘subject’ of research: the scientific researcher who is challenged by moral dilemmas, notably concerning the handling of sensitive information. I will re-assess the famous controversy over the question whether the use by Wilkins, Watson and Crick of ‘photograph 51’, belonging to Rosalind Franklin, was morally objectionable or defendable. Finally, attention will be given to the relationship between science and art, or more precisely: to the interconnectedness between beauty and destruction, as addressed by both Wilkins and Lime.One of the most interesting dimensions of Wilkins’s book is the light it sheds on the mutual entanglement of modern science and modern warfare. On the broader socio-historical level, this entanglement has already been documented by scholars such as Kay , pointinThis interwovenness of science, politics and the military is clearly reflected in Wilkins’s memoirs. Throughout his life, Wilkins was an ‘engaged’ scientist in a rather outspoken way, quite conscious of what he refers to as the “political element in science” Wilkins , p. 35. nuclear physics (the science of death) to bio-physics (the science of life), bringing with him his physical technologies  and his mathematical tools . Wilkins clearly hoped that molecular biology (initiated by physicists such as Max Delbrück and Erwin Schrödinger) would prove more life-friendly and humane than the Manhattan Project, whose horrific outcome had nearly driven him out of science . He decided to shift his focus of research from ‘luminescent’ to ‘aperiodic’ crystals  and from  science , p. 88. Similar dilemmas are mirrored by the movie. In the following, I will briefly focus on three aspects. First of all the unprecedented destructive power of wartime bombardments (culminating in the use of atomic bombs). Secondly, the connection (less obvious perhaps) between penicillin and World War II. And finally, the handling by scientists of sensitive information, notably in the context of espionage and competition. In all three cases, although the contexts of movie and memoirs may seem different, a mutually revealing ‘family likeness’ can be discerned between them in terms of basic ambiance.Innenstadt was policed by international patrols. Each patrol team consisted of four members (one for each of the four powers) who as a rule were neither able to communicate among themselves nor with the Viennese populace, so that bizarre linguistic and cultural confusions unfolded on a daily basis. All this resulted in a most surrealistic and outlandish “lawscape” . A former metropolis has been effectively transformed into dreary heaps of “undignified ruins” These similarities in ‘physiognomy’ of post-war urban areas, certainly add to the congruence in atmosphere and ambiance between the movie and crucial chapters of the memoirs, recounting the discovery referred to in the title. Yet, as I will argue, this congruence not only pertains to the dramatic backdrop as such, but also to the dramatic events that are enacted within this setting. Let us therefore now shift attention from backdrop to action.In the movie, some of the most dramatic scenes are situated underground: the sewage system, Vienna’s The Third Man as an autobiography focuses on the vicissitudes of a British physicist leaving the field of quantum physics to study DNA, The Third Man as a movie tells the story of a penicillin racket set in post-war Vienna. At first sight, the connection between these themes seems minimal. Could any two ‘products’ of modern scientific research be further removed from each other than (life-saving) penicillin and (life-threatening) atomic bombs? And yet, again, on further reflection it turns out that both products convey quite similar moral ambiguities.As indicated, whereas To begin with, a number of ‘synchronicities’ can be discerned between the production of penicillin (a key theme in the movie) and the making of the atomic bomb (a key endeavour in Wilkins’s memoirs). Penicillin was discovered in the 1920s, the ‘golden age’ of quantum physics (the research field from which the nuclear bomb evolved). Alexander Fleming, who is formally credited with the discovery of penicillin, dates his  finding on Friday morning, September 28, 1928 (1 year after the famous fifth Solvay conference on protons and electrons). Still, the transition of penicillin from a laboratory entity into a marketable pharmaceutical product, producible on a massive scale, proved a daunting task. Penicillin was made available for mass production by Merck in 1942, but the War effort significantly accelerated the process. In July 1943, the U.S. War Production Board drew up a plan for the mass distribution of penicillin to Allied troops fighting in Europe, to ensure supremacy of Western armies over enemy forces. For the latter, antibiotics were not available. Thus, the turn towards massive production of penicillin, as part of the military ‘equipment’, coincided in time with  the Manhattan Project .These aspects  are also reflected in Wilkin’s memoirs. During childhood, or instance, his sister suffered from septicaemia and barely survived a series of debilitating operations because “there were no antibiotics then” (p. 17). And during the War, Wilkins himself met with a similar fate: he contracted a severe ear infection and spent 7 weeks in a hospital bed in Berkeley, having holes drilled in his head, because penicillin, although technically available, was not yet producible on a large-enough scale . In other words, both movie and memoirs confirm the vital strategic significance at that time of a medicine whose availability is nowadays taken for granted.military product, in the hands of the occupational powers. Under such circumstances, given the power imbalance between occupants and denizens, and the virtual absence of civil society and democratic institutions, a black market for pharmaceuticals, based on plundering army provisions, was likely to evolve.Preface to the novel  or increased resistance . This (in addition to the short-term damage) is what made nuclear espionage and antibiotics rackets so damaging. Although spies often worked for a cause, while Harry Lime worked for a profit, their impact was by and large the same: they contributed to the proliferation of a  scientific product of significant value which only achieves its goals when it is exclusively used by the ‘right’ hands.What goes for penicillin goes for nuclear information as well: both were very much sought after in those years. Both entities were things of tremendous value. Their availability or absence represented a decisive factor in matters of life and death, or even victory and defeat. As targets of attention, however, they proved difficult to control. Both nuclear information and penicillin were crucial ingredients of the war effort, and both emitted a tempting appeal: STEAL ME, albeit in the one case notably because of political persuasions, in the second case predominantly for pecuniary motives. What goes for uranium or plutonium also applies to penicillin. Such entities may constitute what Lacan refers to as the ‘object Furthermore, a number of family likenesses can be discerned between penicillin and DNA as well. For both entities, purity is a key issue. From the scientific point of view, both entities must be as pure and clean as they can possibly get. A significant portion of Wilkins’s memoirs is dedicated to his efforts to produce pure, undiluted strands of DNA: ‘purified’ DNA, almost ‘pristine’, up to perfection. At a certain point, for instance, he tells us that his DNA was so “excellent” and “pristine” that is was shouting at him, “Look how regular I am!” (p. 124).In this section, the focus has been on the role of the alluring, action-provoking object (from radioactive elements via antibiotics up to DNA). In the next section I will argue that, besides backdrop and object, the congruence between movie and memoirs pertains to the subject-position as well. In both documents, key protagonists are confronted with similar  moral ambiguities and dilemmas.Another by-product (accompanying activity) of warfare is espionage: a second intriguing motif in Wilkins’s memoirs. During his left-wing pre-war years, but also as a prominent scientist, he befriended, or at least became acquainted with, a number of individuals who were actually recruited to spy for the Soviet Union, or even convicted for espionage during the Cold War period. Several Cambridge graduates, who, like Wilkins, had been members of the Communist Party, were accused of giving classified information to the Soviet Union. One of the convicted spies whom Wilkins befriended was Klaus Fuchs 1911–1988), who had joined the Communist Party in Germany, but fled to the United Kingdom in the 1930s where he became enrolled in the British atomic bomb project, moving over to the Theoretical Physics Division at Los Alamos in 1944. He passed information on these projects to the Russians via a spy codenamed ‘Sonia’.8, who haAnother famous spy who figures in Wilkins’s book is Allan Nunn May. Like Wilkins, he studied in Cambridge, joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and became involved in radar research during the early War years. At a certain point it was discovered that, on various occasions, he had passed confidential information to the USSR. Apparently, the police waited outside the door of a lecture theatre where Nunn May was teaching and arrested him as he came out (p. 97). Due to the sudden arrest of the person who at that time was considered the most likely candidate to be appointed as Chair in Physics at King’s College London, John Randall was suddenly offered the position, who in his turn appointed Maurice Wilkins as his deputy. Had Nunn May not been arrested, Randall’s career at King’s would never have happened, Wilkins would not have been invited to London, and the discovery of DNA might have taken a completely different turn. Another spy whom Wilkins befriended during his Cambridge days was Arthur Hone, who disappeared into the Soviet Union. When Wilkins later visited the USSR himself, he failed to retrieve any information concerning Hone’s whereabouts (p. 262).My Silent War, written in Moscow in 1967 and published in Again, at first glance, the congruence between movie and memoirs seems limited. Harry Lime is involved in clandestine penicillin sale rather than espionage. And yet, the movie’s conspiratorial atmosphere of secrecy and cover-ups, of suspicions and arrests is reminiscent of the autobiography in several ways. To begin with, we must keep in mind that during the War, Graham Greene himself had been a secret agent working for the British Intelligence, a close colleague of Kim Philby, the archetypal double agent, one of Britain’s most famous spies, and a prominent member of the notorious Cambridge spy ring Sheldon . Philby The Third Man  and the latter’s misdemeanours: not only his defection to the Soviet Union, but also the ease with which he organised  the elimination of numerous individuals  who somehow stood in the way or had become a risk factor. In a similar way, Wilkins in his memoirs faces the task of clarifying his relationships with the spies he befriended.As a result, there are some striking parallels between Philby and Lime: from the sewers escapes up to passports serving as retribution for love. Given these various parallels between Lime (and Martins) on the one hand and Philby (and Greene) on the other, It has become known, moreover, that, similar to Philby, Wilkins himself had actually been investigated by MI5 between 1951 and 1954 Travis . He was Casino Royale, the first of his highly successful James Bond novels.Espionage was a hot topic during the early 1950s. In fact, Various similarities between movie and memoirs can be pointed out in this respect. As indicated, the movie tells the story of a visitor traveling to Vienna to look for an old friend. The accusation that Harry had diluted penicillin with coloured water Greene , p. 335.12Preface Wilkins explains that he had written his memoirs because his contribution to a Nobel Prize-winning discovery had become tainted by controversy. Like in the case of espionage described above, he had become the target of “investigations” Intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed and full of hesitation —something potentially discreditable to Jim, and to Maurice, and  to Francis.Interestingly, a somewhat similar scenario evolves in the case of the DNA discovery. At first glance, it is a story featuring three scientific heroes. Gradually, however, notably after the publication of Watson’s personal account Preface to his book. The quintessence of the story is that James Watson and Francis Crick partly based their ground-breaking discovery on a crucial piece of evidence: an X-ray diffraction photograph belonging to Rosalind Franklin , known as ‘photograph 51’ and passed on to them (without Franklin’s explicit permission) by Wilkins.As indicated, Wilkins already brings the embarrassing issue up in the King’s College, which initially took the lead in the DNA race  and the team at Cambridge (Watson and Crick). The Cambridge method basically consisted of model building, not only in the literal sense , but also in the figurative sense: putting together pieces of information collected from others, such as Chargaff’s discovery concerning the 1:1 ratios of base-pares, an important clue for solving the DNA puzzle.photograph 51’, taken in 1952—, which she had been keeping to herself. Wilkins describes the controversial event in two different chapters of his memoirs (Chaps. 7 and 8):The most disturbing question relates to an X-ray diffraction photograph that was … lying in a drawer in Rosalind’s office… This photograph was particularly clear, and everyone agreed subsequently that it provided important pro-helix evidence. I was given the pattern by Raymond  on 30 January 1953, when Rosalind was preparing to leave our lab. Why would she, despite having found this evidence, give us an account of why DNA was not helical? (p. 184)Then, something extraordinary happened. One day in January 1953, Raymond met me in the corridor and handed me an excellent B pattern that Rosalind and he had taken… Raymond made it clear that I was to keep the photograph! The new photograph was almost as extraordinary as its being shown to me. It was much clearer and sharper than the first clear B pattern that Rosalind had shown us in October 1951… The new pattern showed the helix X-shape more clearly than ever before. Raymond gave me to understand that Rosalind was handing the pattern over to me to use as I wished.A few days later Jim [Watson] was visiting us, and I stopped him in the main passage of our lab to show him the photograph. I said that it was very frustrating that Rosalind was continuing to base her work on non-helical ideas even though she had this new pattern that was even more convincingly helical than ever. As I stood with Jim in the corridor … I felt I must tell him what I had been thinking … [but] I got no further than saying ‘I think Chargaff’s ratios are the key to DNA structure’ … and Jim said ‘I do too’ before he hurried off. (p. 197/198)In retrospect, all key sources—autobiographical accounts by Watson  was wrong, while Judson  even claThird Man scenario we are dealing with. Both in the movie/novel and in the memoirs, a crucial piece of information is missing. Both stories are about failing to see something which in retrospect seems obvious. And in both of them, crucial information is somehow connected with the intricate position occupied by an intermediary, a (wavering and hesitant) ‘third’ man.It is not my intention to pass ethical judgement in this case, in terms of right or wrong . Rather, I want to point out some structural similarities between the two versions of the The purloined letter, featuring detective Auguste Dupin. This story, which has been meticulously analysed by Lacan , while the thief is subsequently faced with a similar dilemma: by using the letter, he draws attention to his misdemeanour, so that the impact of his disclosure could be thwarted. Once again, the story is about seeing and failing to see, and about having valuable information at one’s disposal, but being unable to use it.To analyse these similarities, let me first of all point out that the story of the ‘purloined photograph’ is reminiscent in many ways of a famous detective story by Edgar Allan Poe entitled by Lacan , concernte Lacan , p. 13—tPhotograph 51 points unequivocally in the direction of a double helix structure, but for some reason she refused to accept this. She keeps the evidence hidden in her drawer, thereby repressing an inconvenient truth. For indeed, precisely because of its superb quality, the photograph (should she have decided to disclose it) would have undermined her anti-helical stance. Therefore, she apparently treats it with negligence, keeping it somewhere in her office. When she is about to leave the department, the picture suddenly shows up: i.e., the return of the repressed. It is clear that Franklin could not really use the picture. Her power over others depended on the fact that her valuable information, exemplified by Photograph 51 , remained unused. Franklin’s intimidating prestige depended on the fact that others  knew that she knew something which they did not know, and that she had something (a piece of evidence) at her disposal which they lacked. As soon as her ‘perfect’ picture, her vital piece of evidence is put into circulation, her power decreases. As soon as her trump card is brought out in the open,—because Wilkins allows Watson to see through Franklin’s cards—, her truth = power game is essentially over.Similar dilemmas are at work in the story of the purloined picture. Initially, Franklin seems to be the one who misses something, who fails to see. In retrospect, her perfectly X-shaped But also Wilkins himself is someone who fails to see, who misses something. While struggling with the DNA data for months, even years, something continues to escape him. How many strands are there: is it a single helix, a double or a triple one? Wilkins confesses that, for quite some time, he is in a “mental logjam” (p. 176); he cannot make up his mind. He persistently seems to follow the wrong track, notably because he and Franklin are on “different wavelengths” (p. 201), hoping for the other to leave the department, or even the field, and therefore failing to notice something  which, in retrospect, seems “obvious” (p. 220). The fact that Franklin withholds her evidence paralyses Wilkins, and causes him to suffer from a “mental block” (p. 199). Because they keep “circling” around each other, as Wilkins phrases it, the Cambridge team can overtake them. But as soon as the crucial information  unexpectedly falls into Wilkins’s hand , he shows it to someone else (in that same corridor), who knows how to make use of it, discerns the truth and fits the pieces together,In essence, the DNA story is a tale of two teams, as we have seen: the King’s team and the Cambridge team. At Cambridge, teamwork clearly is a strength. As Wilkins phrases it, Watson (Jim) and Crick (Francis) “formed a powerful team” (p. 163). Because they combined complementary types of expertise  they “formed a very effective complementary pair for the study of DNA structure” (p. 163).A symptomatic event is the following. Wilkins, in a final desperate effort to overcome the stalemate, and prompted by the Jungian psychotherapist he was seeing, decides to invite Franklin to dinner:I went to see Rosalind on a very warm afternoon, and found her in a large lab where she was busy fitting together the electrical wiring for the Ehrenburg fine-focus X-ray tube. She was sitting on the floor in a lab-coat and seemed quite willing to talk. The work must have been hard, for she was sweating in the heat, but she did not seem to mind the very close atmosphere in the lab. In those days before deodorants we were all used to smelling rather bad after some physical exertion, but in the stifling lab I found myself quite unable to imagine sitting down to dinner with Rosalind that day… I could no longer face the challenge of a sociable evening with her (150/1)But the most dramatic (even tragic) dénouement of the story is the famous letter written by Wilkins to Crick on March 7 1953, shortly after the completion of the model (on 28 February 1953), in which he announces that “our dark lady”  will leave next week, so that Wilkins now finally feels free to start his “offensive on Nature’s secret stronghold”  using all available means, including model building: “All hands to the pumps!”  or not . Wilkins is a ‘messenger’, moving information back and forth, acting as the ‘third’ man, eavesdropping in both directions, and feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the situation.not inside his coffin. He must still be moving about, continuing his game of clever escapes. As Greene phrases it, Harry had a talent for keeping track of everybody else while not being seen himself  truth continues to escape everybody involved, until they suddenly realise that, due to their inattentiveness, their ‘tunnel vision’, they failed to look in the right place. As suspicions increase, they finally decide to open Lime’s frozen grave, and discover that he is  himself , p. 51. no third man. Martins’ presence in Vienna is an embarrassment to both teams. Both teams had expected that he would leave the city at once, and both teams consistently urge him to do so, for he constantly seems to stand in everybody’s way. As long as Martins is around, both the racketeers and the police seem inhibited to act. Gradually, Martins  begins to change his mind: there must indeed have been a third man. The racketeers then decide to murder the witness, who has become a source of embarrassment to them.Moreover, the movie is likewise structured as a competition between two teams, searching (or hiding) valuable clues: on the one hand the pack of racketeers, on the other hand the military police. The police decided to discontinue their hunt for Harry, and the racketeers insist that he is no longer with them. Yet, there is a witness who claims that, instead of two individuals carrying off Lime’s body, right after the fatal accident, a third man had been present, someone without a face: only the top of a head had been spotted from the window (p. 67). But the racketeers insist that there was And then, one night in ghostly Vienna, Martins (retreating from yet another failed attempt to seduce Anna) suddenly discerns, just around a corner, pressed against a wall to escape notice, a stocky figure. A sudden beam of light exposes him , revealing the features of Harry Lime (p. 88), the “undead” third man Dern , who appAt the same time, it is Martins rather than Lime who occupies the position of the ‘third man’, moving back and forth between the two teams (very much like Wilkins), picking up (apparently contradictory) pieces of information here and there, trying hard to combine them into a convincing picture so that he can finally make up his mind which side to choose. The former accomplice becomes a decoy, and in the end he even shoots his boyhood hero, after a chase through the sewer system (a chaotic acoustic Underworld of echoing voices) for which the movie is still famous.homme fatal. Thus, Maurice’s and Holly’s quest for truth (their ‘cupido sciendi’) becomes mixed up with their desperate yearning for intimacy. Holly hopes to form an alliance with Anna, to unravel the truth, but also in the erotic sense: he wants her to regard him as a replacement for Harry, but for various reasons they fail to match and, due to all kinds of misunderstandings between them,Like in the case of Wilkins, moreover, an embarrassing relationship with a lady is involved. Martins falls in love with Anna Schmidt, Harry’s girlfriend, who, with her mysterious dark eyes, plays a role similar to that of Franklin, the “Dark Lady of DNA” Maddox , with heTo summarize the results so far: what do Cold War espionage, detective stories, life sciences research and psychoanalysis have in common? As modes of enquiry, they all revolve around a crucial piece of information which is already there, but which is withheld, missed, overlooked or lost (repressed),—Franklin keeping the picture in her drawer, refusing to recognise the helical structure, Watson failing to take proper notes during her lecture, etc.—while others consistently fail to look for it in the right place . What key players notably fail to see is that they themselves are causing the deadlock: their own blind spots and fatal flaws are blocking the access to truth. This already applied to the case of Oedipus, of course, which may be read as an ancient Greek detective story about a crucial piece of the puzzle which, although available, is kept back, resulting in a stalemate. Information is power, however, and as soon as the missing item is revealed, the power balance shifts. Etymologically speaking, the word ‘symbol’ refers to two pieces of a broken entity , one of which is still available, while the other piece is put in circulation. And then, unexpectedly, for a brief moment, it becomes visible , so that the ‘symbols’ (the two complementary pieces of information) can be glued together, allowing the protagonists to recover from their impotence. In other words, Wilkins has to face the embarrassing fact that he himself is the one who is blocking the way. Unlike alter ego Martins, who becomes an alcoholic, Wilkins opts for psychotherapy, Jungian style; learning that, in order to really discern the truth, science needs a complement, namely: art.Harry Lime’s Vienna is a divided city, a lifeless, destitute place, broken into sectors and inhabited by trapped, ‘divided’ selves. Young men are absent , women fend for themselves and racketeers, foreign soldiers and spies dominate the city centre. Much of the pre-war cultural ambiance (Wittgenstein’s Vienna) has likewise vanished. A skeleton wasteland remains, shot from tilted angles with canted cameras, gloomy and dark, even during daytime. Critics applauded the way the movie evoked the “spirit of place” Gomez , p. 333.unheimlich in every way) is psychoanalysis. Freud died in London while Freudians went into exile and left the Continent. Not only their physical absence is noticeable, their ‘spirit’ vanished as well. But psychotherapy, considerably weakened in Vienna, ‘triumphed’ in the United Kingdom and the United States.One of the cultural ‘layers’ that disappeared from this uncanny metropolis  ‘that women will never get anything out of me’ … I was in very low spirits. … I felt a bit suicidal … After the Freudian debacle, I did try psychoanalysis again. I went for advice to Dr. Bannister in Cambridge and he recommended a Jungian who specialised in marriage breakdowns. Having learnt about the unconscious from Freud, I was now interested in Jung’s ideas about thinking and feeling, and I found a very helpful analyst whom I was to visit for many years …  and persistent difficulties with women. His first wife (Ruth) unexpectedly divorced him after only a few months of marriage.In Birmingham he befriended two arts students who experimented with luminescent crystals similar to the ones he himself used in his research. On a self-made drawing (reproduced in the book) from this period, we see him at work late at night in his lab, while strange ideas, shaped like grotesque animals, float about: an oneiric self-portrayal in Jungian style. In Berkeley he took art classes, finding painting and drawing satisfying ways to relax after a day in the lab (p. 111). Back in London, he became attracted by (the work of) an emigrant painter from Vienna named Anna (p. 111), but their affair soon stranded. Still, art emerges as a complementary activity helping him to ‘suture’ (to use the Lacanian phrase) his chronically divided Self.all civilisation. With profound embarrassment he ‘confesses’ to other travellers his involvement in the bomb project. These “powerful experiences”  make him question the value of science, producing captivating truths as well as bombs.During his subsequent travels to South America he discovers new possibilities for “fusion” of science and art (p. 190). He is hugely impressed by Peruvian art, with its striking contrasts of violence and beauty. Both dimensions seem to evoke one another. Considering how the Spanish invaders smashed Inca civilisation  like invaders from another planet, Wilkins envisions the possible end of cupido sciendi) is triggered by love for their research object, to which scientists often become very strongly attached: “what the poet Coleridge says is still true: the scientist loves the material on which he or she works” (p. 156). This notably applies to his own object of choice, DNA, enigmatic, elusive and sublime:loved DNA: I wanted to savour its nature and find what that nature revealed (p. 208).I had been looking forward very much to being with DNA again. To use Coleridge’s expression: I Resisting laboratory politics, Wilkins refuses to give up DNA and designs special cameras to increase the proximity of his gaze. As one of the first visitors to see the Cambridge model, he senses that “though only bits of wire on a lab bench, [it] had a special life of its own [and seemed to speak] for itself” (p. 212).At Cuzco, the Inca capital, he marvels at the stupendous beauty and size of the granite blocks, the mathematical skills and respect for the material needed to cut them so exactly (p. 192) reminding him of the way in which modern scientists interact with their research object. The scientists’ will to know  and joined a committee on Science and Art to study the congruence between the symmetries of bio-molecular structures—studied by biophysicists with electron microscopes and X-rays (p. 254)—and the geodesic domes of architect Buckminster Fuller . At the same time, both men articulate the view that good and evil, art and violence, truth and warfare somehow belong together.In the movie, this idea is evoked during the famous Prater Ferris wheel scene, featuring Lime as a Zarathustra-like character Gomez , p. 339,In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love—they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock?Although the factual correctness of this quotation is questionable of course  the basic tonality concurs with Wilkins’s memoirs, where a profound mutual entanglement is likewise discerned between warfare  on the one hand and science and art on the other. Scientific breakthroughs are not only producers but also products of wartime activity, which explains how the scientific career of a campaigner for peace and disarmament such as Wilkins became so intimately tied up with war efforts,—from laser technology and luminescent crystals via the Manhattan project up to DNA research. Also for the latter, the connection with warfare has been clearly documented. Post-war genetics and genomics were militarised research fields from the very outset. As Cook-Deegan  is the key archetypal symbol of the movie, the double helix is the basic symbol of Wilkins’s memoirs, the thread between technologies of destruction (the Manhattan Project) and DNA research during the post-war years, the quintessential symbol of the science of life.As for the Great Wheel itself, a final correspondence between the cinematic and the scientific version of e Drazin , the décobject of analysis: post-war molecular life sciences research, culminating in the discovery of the structure of DNA (in 1953)The aim of the analysis: understanding science in retrospect , by focussing on the micro-level of scientific research practicesThe Document 1: a science autobiography (published in 2003)Document 2: a movie, coming from a flanking realm of culture (cinema), released in 1949What lessons can be drawn from this comparative analysis of a science autobiography and a cinema classic for understanding post-war life science research? To address this question, I will first of all unravel it into its four components:Nature publications by Watson and Crick  and the oblique perspective . These four components can be represented with the help of the following matrix:Rather than studying the scientific materials directly , accessThe question now is: what is the added value of these detours, especially when used in combination, for understanding science? In what way and to what extent do they add depth, precision and ‘resolution’ to ongoing philosophical assessments and debates?Science in Action by Bruno Latour, a representative of the “anti-biographical” stance outlined above  to the Introduction of individuals at work. Watson, Crick and Wilkins are explicitly mentioned and “placed in specific situations” (p. 15). Subsequently, however, “people start being slowly erased” (p. 15) so that we end up with decontextualized textbook truths. Ironically, these same individuals disappear in Latour’s account as well. Although he aims to ‘re-open the black-box’, individual scientists are nonetheless left out of the picture. In the French version of Laboratory Life  an exercise in research ethics. On both levels, I would argue, the comparative analysis of the movie adds resolution to the insights provided by the biographical materials. In terms of context, the movie strengthens our sensitivity, not only to the socio-cultural and topological ambiance (backdrop) of the scientific drama (Lime’s post-war Vienna obliquely mirroring Wilkins’s post-war London), but also to the ambiguities and intricacies of the moral dimension, i.e., the dramatic action itself. Both in laboratories and in the outdoors world, individuals in various settings were facing challenging, and in many ways comparable dilemmas concerning the use of sensitive, valuable and confidential information about alluring, but at the same time risky scientific entities that should somehow be contained. The congruencies are mutually revealing, often in unexpected ways. By probing moral quandaries  in different settings, their ambiguities become more pronounced. The comparative approach reveals how these issues were intimately interwoven with broader social and cultural trends, as ‘symptoms’ of post-war culture, but at the same time they are seen through the lens of a movie which, in view of its unrelenting popularity, helped to shape our current image of the post-war era, in combination with an autobiography which aims to bring these issues back to life, but coloured by five decades of hindsight and reflection. In other words, although these documents purport to tell us something about the post-war past (the upper-left cell in the matrix), both the lasting popularity of the movie and the revival of interest in science autobiographies indicate that they also tell us something about the present, namely about the way in which post-war scientific dilemmas are framed and perceived today (the lower-right cell in the matrix).What does the movie add to such an endeavour? In a previous section it was explained, building on Söderqvist , 2011, tThe Third Man, I could have chosen the movie Life Story, about the discovery of DNA, based on personal accounts by Watson, Crick and others and released in 1987, beginning with “Watson’s bungled effort to enter into a dialogue with Wilkins” (during an excursion at Paestum) and ending with the compelling, awe-inspiring DNA model, sublime and immortal, “rotating to celestial music” . At the same time, it lacks both the discursive richness of autobiographical materials  and the unexpected findings provided by the oblique approach . In the case of Life Story, the focus of comparison would be on adequacy: does the movie represent the recorded events in a truthful manner? In short, Life Story concurs with a flash back approach, rather than with the oblique approach. Those familiar with the memoirs will basically know what to expect. The comparative analysis with The Third Man movie, however, is far more experimental.Instead of c” Crick , p. 85. Lucky Jim (after Kingsley Amis’s 1954 novel), while Crick’s title (‘What mad pursuit’) was taken from the poem Ode to a Grecian Urn, written by John Keats in 1819. Would a comparative anatomy work in these two cases as well? In Watson’s case  the parallel seems too obvious to be revealing. And although in the case of Crick some interesting connections can be made, for instance with DNA as music  ambiance of the scientific events, moreover. As a cinematic classic, it also effectively colours the way in which the post-war period is perceived today, so that the arrows in the matrix should actually point in both directions. In the end, the comparative analysis deepens our self-understanding, i.e., our understanding of the present as a normative ambiance for developing critical reflections on the post-war past.All three co-discoverers credited with the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1962 have published memoirs Watson /2005 and


After a reconstruction of Hockett’s views on design features, we raise two criticisms: focus on the means at the expense of content and focus on the code itself rather than the cognitive abilities of its users. Finally, referring to empirical data, we illustrate some of the problems resulting from Hockett’s approach by addressing three specific points—namely arbitrariness and semanticity, cultural transmission, and displacement—and show how the change of perspective allows to overcome those difficulties.The set of design features developed by Charles Hockett in the 1950s and 1960s remains probably the most influential means of juxtaposing animal communication with human language. However, the general theoretical perspective of Hockett is largely incompatible with that of modern language evolution research. Consequently, we argue that his classificatory system—while useful for some descriptive purposes—is of very limited use as a theoretical framework for evolutionary linguistics. We see this incompatibility as related to the ontology of language, i.e. deriving from Hockett’s interest in language as a product rather than a suite of sensorimotor, cognitive and social abilities that enable the use but also acquisition of language by biological creatures (the  We see this incompatibility as deriving from Hockett’s interest in language as a product, leading to a “phenetic” classificatory system tracing superficial similarities. Specifically, we point to two underlying problems: language evolution and the reasons behind the sudden surge of interest it has generated. Next we discuss two fundamental reasons why Hockett’s lists of design features cannot be integrated with this perspective. Those reasons are illustrated with three examples of this incommensurability: the features of arbitrariness/semanticity, cultural transmission and displacement, whose discussion we ground in recent empirical data. We conclude by proposing an alternative approach to (what we take to have been) Hockett’s primary goal, i.e. capturing the difference between the communication of humans and non-human animals.We begin by introducing Hockett’s system, and then contemporary research on language origins, with emphasis on the field of Hockett’s reflection on the design features of language can be divided into three phases: the initial statement  and 1959A Course in Modern Linguistics, a linguistics textbook for college students. (Hockett [Hockett first discussed the design features of language in (Hockett  1967). Acode model of communication . In this particular respect, Hockett’s view aligns with the accounts of communication found in biological sciences, e.g. sociobiology  and consequences (behaviours caused by messages): “A message is displaced to the extent that the key features in its antecedents and consequences are removed from the time and place of transmission” , and “Logical considerations in the study of animal communication”  .The semantic : 142. FiThe introduction of the six new properties doesn’t alter Hockett’s conception of language and the way he defines it. In fact, all of them can be deduced from the old set of features. In the previous format comprised of the seven features, Hockett insists that linguistic behaviour prototypically manifests itself in the vocal auditory channel and—as already indicated—broadcast transmission/directional reception, rapid fading and to an important extent total feedback describe selected characteristics of this channel; whereas the features of semanticity and discreteness were previously subsumed under the discussion of duality. Even in “Logical considerations” , which cprevarication, reflexiveness and learnability—giving in total a list of sixteen features. In the 1966 account, Hockett uses the concept of design features as a platform to discuss language universals that pertain to extremely versatile properties of language, ranging from very general ones, such as the existence of a language in every human culture or the primacy of spoken language over its written form, to specific aspects of grammatical description, such as the presence of proper nouns in every language or the universality of distinctions in vowel quality.The format of 13 properties is—in the tertiary literature on language and linguistics—treated as the standard presentation of Hockett’s design features  is best described as a research area unified by a common goal: to explain the emergence and subsequent development of the species-specific ability of human beings to acquire and use language. It should be distinguished from both historical linguistics and a narrower notion of the evolution of languages , the latter being a quasi-evolutionary, long term historical change in modern-day linguistic systems  major issues: firstly, Hockett’s classificatory system It has been observed  is unsubstantiated in three related ways. Firstly, as is now well known, sign languages are fully equivalent to spoken ones in practically every relevant respect, including morphosyntax, dialectisation, historical change, rough cerebral localisation, and acquisition by children , far from remaining neutral, has ramifications for other aspects of how we define language. In the evolutionary context, it gives rise to two misconceptions. Firstly, it introduces an unfounded bias against looking for the origins of language in gestural communication. The gestural approach to language evolution inaugurated by Gordon Hewes , while nThus, focus on the physical characteristics of the medium of signalling is misplaced. Hockett’s features mentioned above may be useful descriptively in capturing interesting facts about speech  creates puzzling continuities, such as between humans and bees (see footnote 13), monkeys or gibbons (cf. Hockett 1960a: 10–11). Below, we exemplify how many of those problems disappear and the expected (human—great ape) continuities reappear when we turn our attention away from communication towards general cognition; and even within communication—away from the modality towards the content.A note is in order. In line with the majority view in language evolution, our text explicitly prioritises the “individualistic-internalistic” perspective. As we stated in section “functional reference  of numerous authors after Hockett. As is well known, the calls of vervet monkeys demonstrate a kind of referential specificity, termed unlike each other in most relevant respects. Finally, alarm calls are present in a number of nonprimate or even non-mammalian species  productivity  of intersubjective conceptual contents, i.e. of semantic information. This mechanism enables the so-called “ratchet effect” ”). But once again, when we shift the perspective away from communication, we find clear patterns of group-specific, culturally transmitted behaviours in chimpanzees: “chimpanzee cultures” have been widely recognised as real at least since the influential paper by Whiten et al. , a chronology of stepping stones (further development of those skills), and a plausible but falsifiable scenario of selection pressures that would have led to the achievement of those stepping stones. Crucial to the explanation are the social, cognitive and anatomical preadaptations (stepping stones) that are not directly visible in communication but are the necessary prerequisites. As mentioned above, the main areas whose investigation shows most promise for a better understanding of the sources and character of this uniqueness of language are: cooperation with non-relatives, shared intentionality, metarepresentation and Theory of Mind, mimesis and intentional imitation, enhanced memory and executive function, symbolic representation, open-endedness, and recursion—all of which are better understood as cognitive skills rather than features of language in the E-sense.In contrast, language evolution needs a primarily “internalistic” perspective, directly informed by modern evolutionary theory and social and ecological perspectives. An idealised “complete” evolutionary explanation for language would require an “LCA baseline” (socio-cognitive and anatomical skills of the last common ancestor of This paper should not be treated as a comprehensive evaluation of Hockett’s design features. For example, we do not question the descriptive value of his system, nor do we deny the productive applicability of individual features, such as “rapid fading”, to specific problems in language evolution studies (Galantucci et al.


We explored experiences of depression diagnosis and treatment amongst multimorbid patients referred to a metropolitan multidisciplinary outpatient clinic to identify commonalities across this patient group.Patients with two or more chronic conditions and a diagnosis of depression participated in semi-structured interviews that were digitally recorded and transcribed. Thematic analysis was performed on the transcriptions.Multimorbid patients attributed depressive symptoms to the loss of ‘normal’ roles and functionality and struggled to reconcile the depression diagnosis with their sense of identity. Beliefs about themselves and depression affected their receptivity to diagnosis and intervention strategies. These included prescribed interventions, such as psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy, and patient-developed strategies.Functional and social role losses present a clear context in which GPs should raise the subject of mood, with the situational attribution of depression suggesting that psychotherapy, which is rarely offered, should be prioritised in these circumstances. Depression has a substantive negative impact on quality of life. Research over the last twenty years suggests that depression is under-diagnosed and under-treated amongst older people in Western nations -4, and tDifferences between patient and clinician perceptions of depression might contribute to poor diagnosis , as patiPrevious studies exploring patient experiences of illness and depression in specific patient groups have identified themes such as the burden of uncertainty amongst gynaecological patients  and chroIrrespective of age, gender or specific disease, the risk of depression increases with each chronic condition acquired . The preTo this end, we aimed to explore the experiences of multimorbid patients in the development, diagnosis and treatment of depression to identify any common experiences and themes that may occur across a heterogenous and complex patient group.This qualitative study was conducted within a constructivist epistemology, in which concepts of reality are considered to be socially constructed, using an interpretivist theoretical perspective, where the exploration of patient narratives are acknowledged to be interpreted by the researcher . Corbin Participants were recruited from amongst patients who were referred to a multidisciplinary clinic at a metropolitan hospital in Adelaide for the management of multiple chronic conditions between January and June 2011. Consistent with the definition most commonly used in multimorbidity literature , patientThirty-five patients with a diagnosis of depression attended the clinic over the six month period of recruitment. Six were excluded due to language difficulties; four refused; three agreed but on further discussion were not eligible, and one agreed but subsequently could not be contacted. Recruitment opportunities were lost where patients were not approached because of competing clinic priorities or patient non-attendance at their clinic appointment (N = 9). During recruitment, clinic nurses explained the aims of the study, gave patients an information sheet, and obtained informed consent for them to be contacted by the interviewer (MS) to arrange an interview. Of those who agreed to participate, one could not be contacted to arrange an interview. In accordance with the conventions of thematic analysis, recruitment ceased when no new information emerged from the interviews .The semi-structured interview guide contained the following prompts:• Tell me about the first time you experienced depression.• Who did you talk to about how you were feeling? Family/Friends/GP• What does the word ‘depression’ mean to you?• I’d like you to think back to when you were first diagnosed with depression. How was it eventually diagnosed? Tell me about that.• Tell me about what treatment was suggested. How did you feel about the options that they recommended? What affected your decision about whether or not to follow their recommendation?• Did anything prevent you from accessing or continuing to access treatment?• Did you receive any follow-up care from your GP?• What other support or information would you have liked to have received?Three interviews occurred at the hospital, seven occurred at patients’ homes, and two occurred over the telephone. Seven women and four men were interviewed alone; one man was assisted by his wife during the interview. Ages ranged from 48 to 86 years of age (median = 64.5). Interviews ranged from 17 to 68 minutes in length (average = 46.7 minutes), and were digitally recorded as audio files and transcribed verbatim using transcription software program Express Scribe v 5.13 . Audio rInductive thematic analysis, whereby themes are generated from the data as opposed to a pre-existing thematic framework, was performed concurrently with interviews until thematic saturation was reached, in accordance with the methods described by Corbin and Strauss . JournalThematic saturation was reached after ten interviews; two confirmatory interviews were conducted and no new themes arose from those interviews . The intAll participants described depression as developing subsequent to a life event that resulted in the loss of their identity. The most frequently endorsed event was onset or exacerbation of illness (n = 7 participants) where increased symptom burden promoted functional losses that prevented participants from performing their work or family roles. Participants described the interdependent losses of function and roles, and subsequent impact on their sense of identity, as causative of depression.“I started to get depressed because I couldn’t do the things that I was always doing. You know, looking after my family, cooking, things like that because I was told I had to get off my feet, I wasn’t allowed to walk… So my life sort of just, you know, from being a normal mother, wife and that, running around and doing my thing, to doing nothing at all”.Participant stories also included unwanted gains. Many described accompanying burdens such as pain, fear of the unknown and family tension. Pain was the only symptom of physical illness that multimorbid participants reported as a perceived contributor to depression, with several describing the development of depression as being embedded in their ongoing struggle with pain. “Every day’s so hard, you know, to cope, well that’s with-- the [morphine] pump’s good, but all it does is take the edge off, you still have severe, you still have severe pain”. Multimorbid patient beliefs about depression and their personal identity affected their receptivity to the diagnosis. The majority of participants (n = 9) reported being diagnosed by their GP, with one diagnosed following GP referral to a psychiatrist, and two diagnosed during hospital admission for physical illness. Whereas a small number of participants had anticipated the diagnosis and were receptive to the interventions recommended by their clinician, most of these participants were surprised by the diagnosis and reported rejecting the diagnosis at the time of delivery. Multimorbid participants who rejected the diagnosis described incongruence between their beliefs about depression and their beliefs about their own identity. “I guess initially it sort of shocked me, because I thought that I wasn’t sort of in that category…” . “…I’m very strong person, and I don’t allow myself, you know, to be how shall I say, overcome, you know, by emotions… Well, I was surprised”. When probed about their conceptualization of depression, participants described cognitive and emotional symptoms. One participant described depression as a response to the behaviour of other people, and another described it as a consequence of poor response management. Some participants interpreted their symptoms through their beliefs about depression, perceiving themselves as anxious but not depressed, or believing their emotional symptoms to be subclinical to a diagnosis of depression. One participant drew her interpretation of depression from television advertisements for a national mental health initiative (BeyondBlue), stating that because her symptoms were not identical, the diagnosis was inaccurate. “See, on TV now there’s adverts about depression with young people, and that type of thing? So I haven’t felt like that, just maybe down for a little while”. A subtheme of perceived justification for depression emerged. Several participants (N = 3) expressed the belief that they did not have the right to feel depressed, despite the impact of their multiple chronic conditions on their physical and social functioning. These participants devalued their distress by minimizing the impact of their physical symptoms in comparison to those of others, and stating that they “had no reasons for being in this [state]” . Conversely, the belief that physical illness justified depressive symptoms and nullified the veracity of the depression diagnosis was reported (N = 2). “But because I know why I’m like that and I feel that it’s justified, I don’t think that I’m clinically depressed, do you know what I mean? Because I feel that my condition justifies my feelings”. Stigma regarding depression might have influenced rejection of the diagnosis more frequently than reported. Whereas many participants described rejecting the diagnosis, only one reported overt stigma in her reaction to the diagnosis.“…here I go, I’m nutsville.’ And I didn’t agree with it. At first I fought the idea of being on antidepressants, but then realized I couldn’t cope the way I was going, and then went on antidepressants. . . . But at first I thought, oh no, here I go, I’m a nutcase, nobody’s going to take me seriously, and you know, it was embarrassing”.Stigma was observed in non-explicit verbal cues, such as where an initially verbose participant became defensive and refused to discuss depression, and another expressed willingness to help, but consistently avoided answering questions about depression. Stigma was also reflected in non-verbal cues during interviews, such as defensive body language , tone, and facial expressions, and in the use of words that devalued their emotional experience or distanced them from the diagnosis. “So there’s highs and lows, but I wouldn’t say, like, great depression”. .Multimorbid patients reported that GPs offered interventions within the medical framework, such as pharmacotherapy and occasionally psychotherapy. Acceptance of GP treatment recommendations was strongly influenced by beliefs about the interventions and anticipated outcomes, the cause of their depression, and their sense of self-efficacy. Whereas one participant admitted that he had benefitted from psychotherapy, for example, he perceived it as ultimately unsuccessful because the benefit was temporary. “Yeah yeah, it was helpful, unfortunately it doesn’t last forever. . . You get it off your chest. But as I said it doesn’t last forever”. Beliefs about antidepressant safety and efficacy stemmed from observing another person’s experience, perceived risk of side effects, and the threat of disruption to their existing medication regimen. The majority of participants described trialling at least one anti-depressant medication, which either changed or reinforced their pre-treatment beliefs. Experiencing side effects led to accepting different medication, or refusing medication. Refusal occurred particularly where participants perceived their depression as situational and not medical. “I was pretty down on myself in all respects, and couldn’t understand how I fucked up my life, excuse me and I just didn’t think a tablet could take that away”. Participants also described engaging in activities outside of the medical framework to alleviate negative mood and maintain a positive sense of identity, either in addition to or instead of prescribed interventions. Empowering activities, such as exercise and pet ownership, generated a sense of control and positive beliefs about the participant’s personal role in mood management. Disempowering activities were also reported, such as alcoholism, withdrawal and wishful thinking. Coping strategies, such as thinking of themselves as lucky and accepting their multimorbidities, were also described.The stories of diagnosis and treatment of depression revealed in this qualitative study provide valuable insights into the multimorbid patient perspective on depression. Participants talked about their sense of identity as challenged by the loss of their normal life, including work or family roles, activities or physical function. Consequently, it is not surprising that multimorbid patient interpretation of their symptoms and views about depression often conflicted with sense of identity, which created barriers to acceptance of diagnosis and treatment. Previous research has emphasized the importance of patient beliefs in the diagnosis and treatment of depression in primary care . BeliefsSituational attribution of depression also emerged as a strong common theme. A recent systematic review of depression and chronic illness found that participants attribute depression to one or more causes, predominantly external . MultimoWhereas Karasz et. al.’s meta-analysis found that patients who presented their emotional distress as situational were rarely offered anti-depressant medications , all patSeveral multimorbid patients did not recall having been given a diagnosis of depression, although their medication regimens included antidepressant medications; as a consequence their interviews focused on the development and onset of depression symptoms. During the recruitment process two multimorbid patients with a history of depression refused to participate because they were unaware of the diagnosis and believed themselves to be ineligible. This is especially concerning where medication has been prescribed, as several participants reported accepting medication without knowing its purpose. It might reflect patient and GP prioritisation of physical health over psychological health where multiple chronic conditions are present , or be aFinally, whilst participants were forthcoming about intimate details of their medical experiences and personal lives, all exhibited signs of discomfort while talking about depression. The current study reinforces that conscious and unconscious stigma regarding depression continues to present a challenge for clinicians attempting to identify and treat depression amongst multimorbid patients ,30. StraAlthough diagnosis and treatment of depression occurred outside of the multidisciplinary clinic from which we recruited these participants, referral to the clinic might reflect or generate differences between the study population and patients not referred to such a clinic. Additionally, the participant group was limited to multimorbid patients willing to be interviewed about depression. Participation might reflect greater openness to discussing emotions, increasing the likelihood that depression will be diagnosed by their GP . A persoMultimorbid patients attributed depression to life-changing events, many of which were related to their physical health and resulted in threats or changes to their sense of identity. Beliefs about depression, about themselves, and about symptom causation and treatment efficacy strongly affected the diagnostic and treatment process. Functional and social role losses present a clear context in which GPs should broach mood, with the situational attribution of depression suggesting that psychotherapy, which is rarely offered, may be beneficial in these circumstances.The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.MS conceptualized the study, recruited and interviewed participants, performed data analysis and interpretation, and drafted the manuscript. CB assisted with the design of the study, data analysis and interpretation, and drafting the manuscript. SS facilitated data acquisition and assisted with drafting the manuscript. HR assisted with data interpretation and drafting the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2296/15/124/prepub


Distinguishability is a fundamental and operational measure generally connected to information applications. In quantum information theory, from the postulates of quantum mechanics it often has an intrinsic limitation, which then dictates and also characterises capabilities of related information tasks. In this work, we consider discrimination between bipartite two-qubit unitary transformations by local operations and classical communication (LOCC) and its relations to entangling capabilities of given unitaries. We show that a pair of entangling unitaries which do not contain local parts, if they are perfectly distinguishable by global operations, can also be perfectly distinguishable by LOCC. There also exist non-entangling unitaries, e.g. local unitaries, that are perfectly discriminated by global operations but not by LOCC. The results show that capabilities of LOCC are strictly restricted than global operations in distinguishing bipartite unitaries for a finite number of repetitions, contrast to discrimination of a pair of bipartite states and also to asymptotic discrimination of unitaries. Distinguishability is one of the most fundamental measures and, at the same time, a useful tool to characterise capabilities of information applications. In quantum information theory, it has been not only a useful tool to characterise properties of quantum evolutionSince entangled states are generated by entangling unitary transformations, distinguishability of entangling unitaries may also be related to the way that capabilities of certain quantum information tasks are limited. It, however, has been found that in the aspect of distinguishability, unitary transformations have distinct properties to quantum states. If it is allowed to apply unitaries repeatedly many times, perfect discrimination between two unitaries can be achieved in a finite number of repetitions, whereas quantum states cannotIn fact, local operations and classical communication (LOCC) play the key role in entanglement theory: those quantum states that can be prepared by LOCC must be separable states, whereas global operations are necessary to create entangled states. Indeed, distinguishability of quantum states has been a useful tool to find a sharp separation between capabilities of LOCC and global operations. A collection of orthogonal bipartite quantum states, which are therefore perfectly distinguishable by global operations, is provided such that they cannot be perfectly distinguishable with LOCC only7In the case of unitary transformations, distinguishability has been considered in the context of asymptotic discrimination where unitaries can be repeatedly applied. Along the line, results are counterintuitive that any pair of unitaries are perfectly distinguishable in a finite repetitions not only by global operations9We here approach to characterising distinguishability of bipartite unitaries by LOCC in the single-shot scenario and investigate its relation to entangling capabilities. A pair of two-qubit unitaries, both entangling and non-entangling cases, are considered. We show that, on the one hand, any pair of entangling unitaries which do not contain local unitaries see  and 4)  4) for t79U1 and U2 denote two unitary transformations we consider throughout. A general framework of distinguishing unitary transformations works as follows. , such thatFrom this, we introduce an equivalent quantity, the fidelity of unitaries We then have the following relation between distinguishability and fidelity of unitaries,F of unitaries.This shows the reciprocal relation between fidelity and distinguishability of unitaries. Or, to maximise the success probability, the task is to find state N repetitionsN repeated applications of unitaries, N and input state In fact, discrimination of unitaries with Let us also recall a useful decomposition of two-qubit unitary transformations into entangling and non-entangling parts, and then summarise a discrimination task with LOCC.WAB can be factorised into entangling and local unitaries,Two-qubit unitary transformations have a canonical form of decomposition11WAB[d] and non-entangling ones {UA, UB, VA, VB} are local unitaries that only change local basis. The entangling part can be written in a compact way,where the entangling part corresponds to the diagonal one σX =  of Pauli matrices, for X = A, B and a diagonal matrix d = diag. Note that elements in the diagonal matrix d satisfy the order relation, π/4 ≥ vx ≥ vy ≥ vz ≥ 0. The entangling part can be alternatively expressed in its spectral decomposition with Bell states:with vi}i=x,y,z and Then, these parameters {vi}i=x,y,z in the above, it also holds that λ4 ≥ λ1 ≥ λ2 ≥ λ3.From the relations and the order among {UAB1, and UAB2, which do not contain local parts. That is, both of them are expressed in the diagonal form in The goal is then to find the relation between distinguishability of unitaries and their entangling capabilities. For the purpose, we here restrict our consideration to two entangling unitaries d. Note that it can also be decomposed into Bell states as it is in for some diagonal matrix UAB1, and UAB2,, are far in distance. Then, there is a box in the middle such that it is not reached by both parties. Once a bipartite state ρAB comes to the box, one of two-qubit unitaries either UAB1, or UAB2, is applied and then the resulting state, either of the followingsHaving specified the form of unitary transformations to be considered, we now introduce how discrimination between a pair of bipartite unitaries works, together with discrimination of bipartite quantum states, by LOCC. Suppose that there are two parties, Alice and Bob, who want to discriminate between two-qubit unitaries denoted by returns to the two parties. Since they are far in distance, LOCC are only available in both stages of preparation of an input state and discrimination between two resulting states.As it has been shown in the above, distinguishability of two unitaries is obtained by taking an input state as a pure state, see also Then, the next is to discriminate between resulting states, For LOCC discrimination between multipartite states, it has been shown that any pair of orthogonal two-qubit states, i.e., distinguishable by global operations, are also perfectly distinguishable by LOCC7F = 0, the LOCC protocol for discrimination of unitaries reduces to finding a product state such that resulting states are orthogonal. That is, from the results on LOCC discrimination7Therefore, for two unitaries that are perfectly distinguishable by global operations i.e. The results for orthogonal bipartite states have been generalised to non-orthogonal states13which is in fact equal to the case that the minimisation is taken with entangled statesWe now show discrimination of two-qubit unitary transformations in the following cases: i) when global operations are available, ii) when only LOCC are applied in state preparation and measurement, and iii) when state preparation is performed by LOCC and later global operations are applied in measurement. An input state to unitaries, denoted by The state is product if the coefficients satisfy the relations:otherwise, it is entangled.F, see When global operations are available, Alice and Bob can prepare an arbitrary bipartite state in F as a convex combination of four complex numbers where UAB), where Let conv = 0, that is, perfect discrimination is achieved. see O and the convex hull,If the convex full contains the origin where Finally, it is worth to mention the radical difference between quantum states and unitary transformations in the discrimination scenario. In fact, if unitary transformations can be repeatedly applied, one can always find an input state such that the resulting convex hull contains the origin4Recall that a pair of two-qubit states that are orthogonal can be perfectly discriminated not only by global operations but also by LOCC7Let us now consider a pair of two-qubit unitary transformations that are perfectly distinguishable by global operations, in which two resulting states after application of unitaries are orthogonal. Then, for these unitaries, the problem of distinguishing unitaries reduces to finding an input state prepared by LOCC, i.e. a product state in L denote the local convex hull constrained by the condition in Similarly to the convex hull in If the origin is in the local convex hull, L within a convex hull in In what follows, we show that a pair of two-qubit unitaries that are perfectly distinguishable, i.e. pL only depends on From the above, without loss of generality we assume that With these, a point in the local convex hull can be rewritten aspL is found as the midpoint of This shows that ABCD where {A, B, C, D} correspond to B and D, and A and C. The local convex hull thus corresponds to □PQRS where {P, Q, R, S} are midpoints of {DA, AB, BC, CD}, respectively. This can be constructed as follows, see also BD and AC. Then, local convex hull is the collection of all midpoints of points on AC and BD. For instance, taking one point A and points on BD, one can find the midpoints on PQ. Or, taking C and BD, midpoints RS are found. In this way, one can see that □PQRS is the local convex hull.In O is in the convex hull, then it is also in the local convex hull. This follows from geometric properties of a circle: if a line is drawn within a circle where both end points touch the circle, then another line from the midpoint such that it is orthogonal to the original line passes through the origin. In this case, see CD and S its midpoint. Applying the property here, it holds true that if a line is drawn from S such that it is orthogonal to CD then it passes the origin. This proves that if the origin is in the convex hull, it is also in the local convex hull. Thus, we have shown that a pair of entangling unitaries that are perfectly distinguishable by global operations can also be perfectly discriminated by LOCC.Finally, having constructed the local convex hull within the convex hull, it remains to show that if the origin While it has been shown so far that distinguishing entangling unitaries LOCC are as powerful as global operations, we here show that it cannot be generalised to arbitrary unitaries. We provide a pair of non-entangling unitaries, i.e. local unitary transformations, that are perfectly distinguishable by global operations but not by LOCC.Let us consider two local unitaries, the product of which iseiπ, eiπ/2} containing the origin. Thus, two unitaries in this case are perfectly distinguishable by global operations. For instance, by taking input state The convex hull of UA or UB is perfectly distinguishable, it is not possible to perfectly discriminate between a pair of local unitaries having product UA does not contain the origin, neither does the convex hull of UB. Hence, they cannot be perfectly discriminated by LOCC.This shows that, unless either of the products Coming back to entangling unitaries having their product in the diagonal form in FL the fidelity from the local convex hull, we have the following as the fidelity between unitaries,Then, what remains for optimal discrimination of unitaries is to compare state preparation, that is, local states and entangled states as input states to unitaries. This means that one has to find the convex hull in F in FL in the above.with PQRS where S corresponds to the midpoint of DC. Moreover, OS is orthogonal to DC and thus gives the minimal distance between the local convex hull to the origin. In fact, this shows that the minimal distance is equal to the distance between the convex hull □ABCD and the orgin, and hence, we haveWe recall that in the complex plane in We have shown that, for distinguishing entangling unitaries having their product in the diagonal form in We have considered distinguishability of bipartite two-qubit unitary transformations in the following cases: i) global operations are available, ii) LOCC are only available, and iii) LOCC are available in state preparation and global operations can be applied in measurement for state discrimination. We have then compared the three cases. We first recall that for a pair of bipartite quantum states, if they are orthogonal, they are perfectly distinguishable not only by global operations but also LOCC79Finally, we have shown that a pair of entangling unitaries having their product in How to cite this article: Bae, J. Discrimination of two-qubit unitaries via local operations and classical communication. Sci. Rep.5, 18270; doi: 10.1038/srep18270 (2015).