I've been reading So Good They Can't Ignore You and there's an interesting section on this phenomenon: “The Baffling Popularity of Randomized Linear Network Co

I've been reading So Good They Can't Ignore You and there's an interesting section on this phenomenon: “The Baffling Popularity of Randomized Linear Network Coding As I write this chapter, I’m attending a computer science conference in San Jose, California. Earlier today, something interesting happened. I attended a session in which four different professors from four different universities presented their latest research. Surprisingly, all four presentations tackled the same narrow problem—information dissemination in networks—using the same narrow technique—randomized linear network coding. It was as if my research community woke up one morning and collectively and spontaneously decided to tackle the same esoteric problem. This example of joint discovery surprised me, but it would not have surprised the science writer Steven Johnson. In his engaging 2010 book, Where Good Ideas Come From, Johnson explains that such “multiples” are frequent in the history of science. Consider the discovery of sunspots in 1611: As Johnson notes, four scientists, from four different countries, all identified the phenomenon during that same year. The first electrical battery? Invented twice in the mid-eighteenth century. Oxygen? Isolated independently in 1772 and 1774. In one study cited by Johnson, researchers from Columbia University found just shy of 150 different examples of prominent scientific breakthroughs made by multiple researchers at near the same time.” Excerpt From: Newport, Cal. “So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love.” His thesis on this is basically that these discoveries depend on a lot of other things occurring first and that once those things have occurred, anyone looking in the right place will see it. With all of that said, I remain skeptical, at least in the Heartbleed case (they're just SOO close together). tptacek has more experience in these things than me of course, so I'll defer to his thoughts.