Lateral Thinking for Every Day

09

Why do experts reject new ideas?

We would expect scientists, doctors and experts to be open-minded and receptive to new ideas. But there are many examples of where highly trained people clung to outdated assumptions and rejected new ideas despite strong evidence for their efficacy.

Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865) was a Hungarian doctor and scientist who worked at a time when puerperal fever (also known as childbirth fever) was common in hospital maternity wards and often fatal. Semmelweis worked at the Vienna General Hospital’s Obstetric Clinic, where he learnt that doctors’ wards had three times the mortality of midwives’ wards. He found that the incidence of this condition could be greatly reduced by rigorous hand washing by clinicians dealing ...