Ironclad laws and theorems such as: Newton’s laws of “for every action there is an equal and opposite action” or “energy can be neither created nor destroyed,” or the Pythagorean Theorem, or e=mc^2.
Did the scientific community say “yeah, there we go” and embrace these discoveries quickly, or did Newton, Pythagoras, Einstein have to do some intellectual arm-wrestling with them for a long while in order to get them to buy into it?
What makes you say they are “ironclad”? That might give you a hint to your answer.
I am sure it varies based on the field, how much the discovery goes against established belief, how advanced communication technology is, etc.
I think there is a 20 year gap in between scientific research and clinical practice in medicine.
In the middle ages, it was far longer sometimes. For example the idea that limes could combat scurvy was known off and on for hundreds of years before becoming canon.
then again, didn’t the guy who theorized blood was circulated have his theory taken seriously almost instantly? edit: I looked it up, it took 20 years for that to be accepted.
Germ theory and the washing of hands took a while to be accepted by the medical community.
There’s no general rule.
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection was widely embraced by many scientists shortly after it was proposed in 1859, although there were holdouts. It fell somewhat out of favor as a mechanism (although evolution was accepted) later in the 1800s. It wasn’t until the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis from the early 1900s to the 1940s that united natural selection and genetics that it came to be nearly universally accepted. So that’s perhaps 80 years.
Einstein proposed general relativity in 1915, and tests confirming its prediction concerning the bending of light were conducted in 1919. The theory became widely accepted by scientists after that. So that’s four years.
I find this the most astonishing example for quickly confirming a scientific theory I’ve heard of (given how revolutionary and outlandish the theory was), and I think that Eddington’s achievement in this was almost as great as Einstein’s. First thing I thought about when I read the OP.
ETA: a counterexample are Wegener’s plate tectonics. Like Darwin, he didn’t have an explanation for the process, so it took a long time to be confirmed.
There’s no general rule.
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection was widely embraced by many scientists shortly after it was proposed in 1859, although there were holdouts. It fell somewhat out of favor as a mechanism (although evolution was accepted) later in the 1800s, until the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis from the early 1900s to the 1940s that united natural selection and genetics that it came to be nearly universally accepted. So that’s perhaps 80 years.
Einstein proposed general relativity in 1915, and tests confirming its prediction concerning the bending of light were conducted in 1919. The theory became widely accepted by scientists after that. So that’s four years.
Another good example of delayed acceptance. Like Darwin, who didn’t know about genes or Mendelian genetics, Wegener had a theory but no good mechanism. He first proposed “continental drift” in 1912, but it didn’t become widely accepted until 1965, after sea-floor spreading had been discovered. When I was in college in the early 1970s it was still considered a kind of flaky theory.
It’ll depend on what the state of knowledge was before the new discovery. For instance, it was known long before Pythagoras that a 3-4-5 triangle has a right angle, and probably also known for some other triples like 5-12-13. So when Pythagoras came up with a proof for the general rule, it would have been no surprise. Similarly, at the time of Darwin, many biologists suspected that organisms evolve from other organisms, based on the observed similarities and differences between them: Darwin merely provided the mechanism for how it happens.
Mrs. Cretin was baffled by this in her late 60’s college days. She thought the theory was a slam dunk, obviously correct. In the mid 70’s a (Scripps) oceanographer I knew told me that “nobody serious” was doubting it any more.
Of course, it wasn’t limes specifically, but vitamin C, which is found in lots of fresh fruits and veggies, and also (in limited quantities) in some fresh meat.
Citrus fruits are excellent sources, but limes are actually far from the best - oranges and lemons are better.
I was in junior high in the late 70s, and I asked my science teacher if he believed in continental drift. He told me that it was established science. I’m not sure where I got the idea that some people accepted it and others didn’t, but it’s good to know that I wasn’t completely off-base.
But this theory was a generalization of his ‘special relativity’ from 10 years earlier, which evolved from even earlier work by Lorentz. So scientists were kind of ‘prepared’ for this, and thus when experimental test seemed to confirm it, they mostly readily accepted it. In fact, even running tests that soon is an indication that the theory was being seriously considered. Some hypothesis sit untested for years because they are considered too weird.
Yeah, the fact that nobody knew what vitamin c was until the 1930s didn’t help.
I think some ships thought it was the acid in limes that prevented scurvy so they tried vinegar to no avail. Some thought limes that were pre cut would work, but those lose vitamin c due to oxidation. I think there were also issues with pipes destroying vitamin c of some fruit based beverages.
There were so many unknowns that probably stopped adoption.
There was a documentary about developing world diseases. Some researcher discovered that kids who got vitamin A supplements had lower death rates from infectious diseases.
The idea wasn’t taken too seriously until someone discovered that vitamin A plays a role in the immune system. Without an easy to explain mechanism, people seem to be more likely to reject the new idea.
I wonder if there is some deeper motivation to this question? Perhaps the OP has a hunch about some knowledge that they think the scientific community is wrongly dismissing?
Galileo got a lot of grief for some of his ideas for quite a long time.
Moderator Note
Let’s not question the motivations for a question in GQ. Instead you should try to provide factual information. In particular, your first post wasn’t really pertinent in this forum. If you can’t contribute to answering a question, there is really no need for you to post in this thread.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
As I mentioned, the theory began to become widely accepted by geologists and other professional scientists around 1965. It took maybe 10 years for the message to reach the general public via high school and university courses. So acceptance became more generally from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s.
Science advances one funeral at a time.
I’m not following this. Darwin did have an explanation for the process: natural selection.
When a new killer hypothesis comes forward it has to two things, which happen at different speeds and possibly to different audiences in the discipline.
Firstly, it has to explain known reality better than the existing theories, which means having to look at eminent Professor Plum’s work and not just trashing it, but clearly explaining why New Theory has better explanatory power on the same evidence as Plum had, and why it can pick up/ explain/ categorise / count/ label evidence in a better way [and what ‘better’ actually means].
Secondly, it has to not just be neater on existing evidence, it has to be validated in some way on new data and to show that it has greater predictive ability and robustness for deriving new information.
Depending on the discipline this has to happen as existing multi-year programmed research agendas and career trajectories unfold, as Professor Plum decides he’s only years from retirement and does not need this shit, as pushy young researchers look at opportunities to make reputations as they seek tenure.
Its not just the sheer force of the idea but a whole bunch of social and professional factors that influence the take-up of new ideas.