[quote=Arraya]
My favorite story about human stupidity and how it was fought is about a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis. He discovered that childbed fever mortality rates could be reduced ten-fold if doctors would wash their hands (we would now say disinfect). This idea was fought, called unscientific by the medical community and was not adopted until decades after his death. He eventually, ended up dying in a mental institute.
The “Semmelweis effect” is a metaphor for the reflex-like rejection of new knowledge because it contradicts entrenched norms, beliefs or paradigms.
