<p>
</p>
<p>That’s not the question I was answering. I was simply pointing out that there have been famous cases in history where seminal scientific ideas were initially neglected, even ridiculed, and anybody who is a serious scientist, or at least a historian of science, should know about.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that the progression of science is not characterized by the ‘truth’ per se or by data, but rather by paradigms as famously described by Kuhm, however much we might like to believe to believe otherwise. To paraphrase the eminent Physics Nobel Prize winner Max Planck: ‘Science advances one funeral at a time’ - meaning that science doesn’t actually progress by convincing established scientists, but rather by having those established scientists die off and be replaced by newer blood. Whether we like it or not, that is indeed how science actually progresses. </p>
<p>None of this is to say that Bishop necessarily was advancing an idea that was rejected by the established scientific community. I am simply saying that we should appreciate that the progression of science is far messier than the idealistic image that was taught to use in high school, and there have indeed been imfamous cases of ingenious scientific ideas that were rejected by their contemporaries.</p>
<p>And frankly (which was the point of my post), anybody who has never heard of any such cases isn’t particularly well educated in the history of science. I’m sorry if that’s harsh, but if you’re a serious scientist, you should know that such cases do exist.</p>