That's a good example, but I'd say that it's a relatively unusual case. There, the technology's customers were other scientists (more precisely, people-of-scien

That's a good example, but I'd say that it's a relatively unusual case. There, the technology's customers were other scientists (more precisely, people-of-science), and so what was required to convince them was empirical evidence. But even though empirical evidence was exactly what Semmelweis had, they still wouldn't believe him. Another example would be anti-vaxxers today. Here too, though, we have a special case. The technology was so successful that people forgot how bad of a problem it solved. Interestingly, in these cases my statement about lack of success implying lack of benefit is wrong, but these are the very cases where the benefit is easily proven empirically.