There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the typical skepticism surrounding new scientific discoveries and the tendency to overlook or misattribute those who made them.
Bill Bryson's quote succinctly captures the common trajectory of scientific discovery: initial disbelief, followed by a dismissal of its significance, and finally a misattribution of credit. This reflects not only the challenges faced by innovators in being recognized for their contributions but also the societal tendency to resist change and to acknowledge new ideas only after they gain acceptance, often crediting the wrong individuals in the process.
In practice
During a presentation on the history of scientific breakthroughs, this quote could illustrate how many discoveries were initially dismissed.
For most of us the rules of English grammar are at best a dimly remembered thing. But even for those who make the rules, grammatical correctitude sometimes proves easier to urge than to achieve. Among the errors cited in this book are a number committed by some of the leading authorities of this century. If men such as Fowler and Bernstein and Quirk and Howard cannot always get their English right, is it reasonable to expect the rest of us to?
I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him.
Open your refrigerator door, and you summon forth more light than the total amount enjoyed by most households in the 18th century. The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed.
The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose
Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.
My first rule of consumerism is never to buy anything you can't make your children carry.
The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.
Do you realize that the 850 billion dollar bank bailout, that sum of money is greater than the entire 50 year running budget of NASA. And so when someone says, 'We don't have enough money for this space probe.' No, it's not that you don't have enough money. It's that the distribution of money that you're spending is warped in some way that you are removing the only thing that gives people something to dream about tomorrow.
Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.
In Einstein's equation, time is a river. It speeds up, meanders, and slows down. The new wrinkle is that it can have whirlpools and fork into two rivers. So, if the river of time can be bent into a pretzel, create whirlpools and fork into two rivers, then time travel cannot be ruled out.
And I don't care what else anyone has ever told you, the Sun is white, not yellow. Human color perception is a complicated business, but if the Sun were yellow, like a yellow lightbulb, then white stuff such as snow would reflect this light and appear yellow-a snow condition confirmed to happen only near fire hydrants.
Go out and collect data and, instead of having the answer, just look at the data and see if the data tells you anything. When we're allowed to do this with companies, it's almost magical.
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