To be fair, revolutionary scientific advances spend a long time in the heresy box. Sample bias. If a revolutionary advance wins converts relatively quickly via

To be fair, revolutionary scientific advances spend a long time in the heresy box. Sample bias. If a revolutionary advance wins converts relatively quickly via overwhelming evidence (the invention of the transistor, high Tc superconductivity, the discovery of extrasolar planets, siRNA, mammalian cloning, stem cells...) everyone is astonished for a while, but then they get used to it. But if an advance is so subtle or difficult to measure that it takes 20 years to catch on, we are doomed to hear about that incident, over and over, from every crackpot in the world for the next hundred years. If Galileo's estate could collect a nickel from every perpetual-motion inventor who has invoked his name, they would own Italy and be bidding on the rest of the E.U.