Syndrom Pioniera

For example, Bill Gates was a complete outsider to the computer business. Larry and Sergey, founders of Google, were newcomers to the search engine game. (Early on, they tried to sell their search technology to Yahoo! for $1 million, but Yahoo! turned them down).

Fred Smith, founder of Federal Express, was a virgin in the shipping industry. Ray Kroc of McDonald's wasn't a restaurant veteran; he was a milkshake machine salesman. Lou Gerstner, who engineered a turnaround at IBM, had come from Nabisco and American Express. Before Jack Welch transformed GE, he was a chemical engineer.

Mathematician and quantum physicist Barbara Shipman, a University of Rochester researcher, noticed that the shape of the honeybee’s dance closely mimics something in physics called the flag manifold. Benjamin Franklin, a printer and statesman, discovered that lightning comes from electricity. George Simon Ohm, who discovered "Ohm's law" of electricity, was a schoolteacher. Charles Darwin was a medical school dropout studying for the ministry when he took his famous trip to the Galapagos Islands on the HMS Beagle.

Novel approaches usually come from outsiders. All these people had an outsider's point of view that enabled them to see something to which insiders were blind.

Word of Semmelweis’ success spread across Europe… and so did opposition to his ideas.

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The term Semmelweis reflex refers to new knowledge being rejected because it overturns entrenched norms, popular beliefs and accepted paradigms.

Tak jak wielu pionierów nauki przed nim i po nim, Wesaliusz nie wytrzymał nagonki, której stał się celem. Spalił swoje rękopisy, porzucił badania anatomiczne i podjął się pracy medyka na dworze Karola V w Madrycie.

Wesaliusz nie był jedynym anatomem, które obserwacje spotkały się z krytyką. William Harvey, siedemnastowieczny lekarz brytyjski, spędził osiem lat na badaniu krążenia krwi. Jego ustalenia w tym zakresie miały okazać się trafne, lecz za życia spotkał się jedynie z szyderstwami i zniewagami. Stracił wielu przyjaciół i pacjentów.

The discovery of blood types explained why transfusions often failed: because the donor and the recipient had incompatible types. It was a hugely significant discovery, but unfortunately almost no one paid any attention to it at the time.
Thirty years would pass before Landsteiner’s contribution to medical science was recognized with a Nobel Prize in 1930.

Prophets challenge the status quo, often earning the hatred of those in power.