There’s a saying, “progress is made one funeral at a time”, especially in science but also in other areas; smbc had a good comic about it too a whole back (am i

There’s a saying, “progress is made one funeral at a time”, especially in science but also in other areas; smbc had a good comic about it too a whole back (am in mobile and can’t find it now). Linus Pauling famously and successfully used all his night to reject the idea of quasicrystals. The Updated concept of crystals was adopted shortly after his death; i can’t say I was able to track the history - there is an enormous amount of whitewashing - but it seems initially everyone rejected quasicrystals, but eventually people started to look at ahechtman’s evidence - and accept it, except not publicly because the luminaries of the field led by Pauling rejected it. And then Pauling’s funeral allowed the science to finally advance.