TB, Streptomycin, and Who Gets Credit

The Science Show did a feature story recently about the discovery of streptomycin,  the first antibiotic to treat tuberculosis, which had killed 2 billion people in the 18th and 19th centuries. Streptomycin was discovered by graduate student Albert Schatz in 1943, who worked in the lab of Professor Selman Waksman at Rutgers. Waksman was the sole winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize for this work. The story is narrated by the author of the book Experiment Eleven, who paints Waksman as the villain and Schatz as the victim. Evidently, Waksman convinced Schatz to sign away his patent rights to Rutgers but secretly negotiated a deal to obtain 20% of the royalties. When Schatz discovered this, he sued Waksman and obtained a settlement. However, this turned the scientific community against him and he forced him out of microbiology into science education. To me, this is just more evidence that prizes and patents are incentives for malfeasance.