Should I mention a discovery was made by mistake? How is this practice viewed? How common is it to mention that a discovery was made by accident and if it is acceptable to say that in a paper?
We often hear historical accounts on how discoveries were made by accident, however, I never saw it mentioned in a paper. I wonder if here would be a good place to ask for examples.
I am asking that because I recently made a discovery and the specific conditions I used were simply by mistake. These conditions were not used before and it was not my intent to use them, I just used the buffer of a different experiment.
Usually, there is an explanation of why a specific condition was chosen, but if there is no reason beforehand, is it better to come up with an explanation or to state it was by trial?
The paper is not the place to give a step by step account of everything that happened. You should have a research log, or lab log, or some other form of documentation that does that, but that is separate from the paper. The paper is there to present your finding in a clear and concise way. Based on the paper you should be able to replicate the results, but, depending on the kind of research you do, is not necessarily the same as a complete list of every step taken. I think of the paper as the summary for the research log and code.
I can imagine accidents where it is worthwhile to mention that in the paper, others where it can be entertaining and other accidents where it is not appropriate in the sense that it wastes the readers time. It depends on the accident and the style of paper you are writing, where the latter in a large part depends on the journal you intend to sent it to.