Suppression of New Ideas & Innovations

Human history is riddled with examples of innovations and research that had been suppressed and derogated by the leading science community and the accepted scientific conventions of the time. Throughout human history, many innovators became the victims of the insults of the skeptical scientific, governmental and corporate power elites.

Many innovators, scientists, and scholars know that disagreeing with the dominant view is risky, especially when that view is backed by powerful interest groups. When someone introduces a new innovation, presents an unconventional scientific view, or comes out with a new way of doing things that threatens a powerful interest group, typically a government, industry or professional body, representatives of that group attack the innovator's ideas and the innovator personally. Such attacks are carried out by censoring writing, blocking publications, withdrawing or denying grants, taking legal actions, and spreading false information or rumors.

What are the effects of suppression of new ideas, intellectual dissent, unconventional, or unpopular scientific views? Suppression is not only a denial of the open debate that is the foundation of a free society, it also creates artificial barriers and in effect retard innovation and creativity. Moreover, it has a chilling effect that breeds external censorship as well as self-censorship. If we can learn anything from the history of science, it is the dissidents and the unconventional thinkers who have spurred science on.

The following quotes and facts illustrate the initial hostile and trivializing attitude towards new ideas, scientific inquiries, and revolutionary innovations.

“I watched his countenance closely, to see if he was not deranged... and I was assured by other Senators after we left the room that they had no confidence in it." --Reaction of Senator Smith of Indiana after Samuel Mores demonstrated his telegraph before member of Congress in 1842.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." --Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

Nobel Laureate Hans Krebs’ discovery of the metabolic cycle that would eventually bear his name was rejected from the journal Nature.

When Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar presented his ideas at the Royal Astronomical Society in January 1935, most famous astronomer at that time, Arthur Eddington, ridiculed his ideas. It took decades before the Chandrasekhar Limit was accepted by all astrophysicists and eventually his idea became the foundation for the theory of black holes. Forty years later, Chandrasekhar was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in physics.

Galileo’s ideas about the universe were first dismissed as being impossible. The priests and aristocrats feared the worldview that his ideas were beginning to force upon people. Galileo was placed under house arrest.

Nobel prize-winning biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi never got funded for his work on the relevance of quantum physics to living organisms.

As documented by Dr. Brian Martin of University of Wollongong, in his books and articles, many scientists pursuing research critical of pesticides or proposing alternatives to pesticides have come under attack and have been threatened with dismissal and in some cases had been dismissed. Government scientists critical of nuclear power have lost their staff and have been transferred as a form of harassment.

When Nobel laureate Hans Alfven came up with the idea of parallel electric fields he was ridiculed for his work.

When Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius proposed his idea that electrolytes are full of charged atoms, it was considered a crazy notion.

“Mr. Bell, after careful consideration of your invention, while it is a very interesting novelty, we have come to the conclusion that it has no commercial possibilities." -- J. P. Morgan's comments on behalf of the officials and engineers of Western Union after a demonstration of the telephone.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." --Western Union internal memo, 1876.

Luigi Galvani's experiments were ridiculed because they countered established views. He was called the "frogs' dance instructor." His innovative experiments eventually became the basis for the biological study of neurophysiology.

When Scanning-tunneling microscope was invented in 1982, it was met by hostility and ridicule from the specialists in the microscopy field. In 1986, the inventors won the Nobel prize.

George Ohm's initial publication was met with ridicule and dismissal and it was called "a tissue of naked fantasy." Ten years later, scientists recognized its great importance.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" --David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" --H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." --Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" --Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

Stanford Ovshinsky's invention of glasslike semiconductors was attacked by physicists and ignored for more than a decade. Finally he got funding from the Japanese for his work. Consequently, the new science of amorphous semiconductor physics was born.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." --Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

When Sherwood Rowland, Mario Molina and Paul Crutzen first warned that chemicals called cholorofluorocarbons or CFCs, were destroying the ozone layer they were ridiculed for their work. In 1995, Rowland, Molina and Crutzen, won a Nobel Prize.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man." --G. B. Shaw.

In 1908 Billy Durant, in trying to raise money to create an automobile trust, boasted to J.P. Morgan & Co. "that the time would come when half a million automobiles a year will be running on the roads of this country." This annoyed Morgan partner George W. Perkins who said "If that fellow has any sense, he'll keep those observations to himself." Unable to raise capital in Wall Street, Durant went home and put together something called General Motors.

When Warren and his team introduced a new facet to MRI theory, his colleagues at Princeton told him that his insane ideas were endangering his career. They held a mean-spirited bogus presentation mocking his work. After seven years, Warren was vindicated. His discoveries are leading to the development of new MRI techniques.

During 1903 to 1908, Wrights' claims about their airplane invention were not believed. Most American scientists discredited the Wrights and proclaimed that their mechanism was a hoax.

The inventors of the turbine ship engine, the electric ships telegraph, and the steel ship hull were initially met with disbelief and derision for their work.

When Thomas Edison became successful with a light bulb filament he invited members of the scientific community to observe his demonstration. Although many from the general public went to witness the lamp, the noted scientists refused to attend. Sir William Siemens, England's most distinguished engineer said "Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress." Professor Du Moncel said "The Sorcerer of Menlo Park appears not to be acquainted with the subtleties of the electrical sciences. Mr. Edison takes us backwards."

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." --Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology, 1872.

"Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value." -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre

Wonderful Quotations on Innovation

"If at first, the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it." -- Albert Einstein.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."--Arthur Schopenhauer.

“At their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and mad men.” -- Aldous Huxley.

"Every great advance in science has been issued from a new audacity of the imagination" --John Dewey.

"That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next" --John Stuart Mill.

"Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created" --Albert Einstein.

"No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess"--Isaac Newton.

"That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time" --John Stuart Mill.

"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false."--Paul Johnson

"Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as "conceptual necessities", etc. The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors." --Albert Einstein

"All great truths began as blasphemies." --George Bernard Shaw

Amazing Facts About Success & Failure

"Our greatest glory is not in ever falling but in rising every time we fall." --Confucius

Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4 and did not read until he was 7. His teacher described him as "mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams." He was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School.

Sigmund Freud was booed from the podium when he first presented his ideas to the scientific community of Europe. He returned to his office and kept on writing.

Thomas Edison's teachers said he was "too stupid to learn anything." He was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive."

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas." He went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland. In fact, the proposed park was rejected by the city of Anaheim on the grounds that it would only attract riffraff.

French acting legend Jeanne Moreau was told by a casting director that her "head was too crooked and she was not beautiful enough to make it in films." She said to herself, "I guess I will have to make it my own way." After making nearly 100 films her own way, in 1997 she received the European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sidney Poitier was told by a casting director, "Why don't you stop wasting people's time and go out and become a dishwasher or something?" It was at that moment, recalls Poitier, that he decided to devote his life to acting.

Beethoven's teacher called him "hopeless as a composer." We all know that he wrote some of his greatest symphonies while completely deaf.

Van Gogh sold only one painting during his life. This did not stop him from completing over 800 paintings.

An art dealer refused Picasso shelter when he asked if he could bring in his paintings from out of the rain. Stravinsky was run out of town by an enraged audience and critics after the first performance of the Rite of Spring.

A young reporter asked Pablo Casals when he was 95 "Mr. Casals, you are 95 and the greatest cellist that ever lived, why do you still practice six hours a day?" Mr. Casals answered, "Because I think I'm making progress."

Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college. He was described as both "unable and unwilling to learn."

Emily Dickinson had only seven poems published in her lifetime.

English crime novelist John Creasey had 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books.

John Milton wrote Paradise Lost 16 years after losing his eyesight.

Engineers Tune A Nanoscale Grating Structure To Trap And Release A Variety Of Light Waves

Light waves transmit data with much greater speed than do electrical signals, says Qiaoqiang Gan, a Ph.D. candidate at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. If they are guided with sufficient precision inside the tiny circuits of an electronic chip, they can bring about applications in spectroscopy, sensing and medical imaging. And they can hasten the advent of faster all-optical telecommunication networks, in which light signals transmit and route data without needing to be converted to electrical signals and back.

To enable light waves to store and transmit data with optimal efficiency, engineers must learn to slow or stop light waves across the various regions of the spectrum.

Gan and his adviser, Filbert J. Bartoli, department chair of electrical and computer engineering, made a major contribution to this effort last year when they developed a graded metal grating structure capable of slowing or stopping terahertz (THz) light waves. The achievement, said Bartoli, "opened a door to the control of light waves on a chip" that could help reduce the size of optical structures, enabling them to be integrated at the nanoscale with electronic devices.
Gan and Bartoli reported their results in June in Physical Review Letters (PRL). Their article was coauthored by Yujie J. Ding, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Zhan Fu, a Ph.D. candidate advised by Ding. The researchers are affiliated with Lehigh's Center for Optical Technologies.

Recently, Bartoli's team recorded a second major advance. Working again with Ding, they demonstrated that their grating structure could be scaled down in size to a dimension compatible with light waves in the telecommunications portion of the spectrum.

THz waves measure several hundred microns in length (1 micron is one-millionth of a meter) and are suitable for security applications. Wavelengths in the telecommunications range of the spectrum measure 1330 to 1550 nanometers (1 nm is one-billionth of a meter) and are suitable for optical communications.

The three researchers reported their progress in a second PRL article, titled "Rainbow Trapping and Releasing at Telecommunication Wavelengths." The article was published in the journal's Feb. 6 issue.

In the current article, the researchers also address a phenomenon called loss in metals, in which the metal materials of a chip, instead of simply propagating light, also absorb it and dissipate it as heat. Metal loss occurs more strongly with telecommunications light waves than with THz light waves.

To use trapped light waves for telecommunications, says Gan, it is necessary to release them from the grating structure. Gan and his colleagues accomplished this by covering the structure with dielectric materials.

"By tuning the temperature of the dielectric materials, we were able to change the optical properties of the metal grating structure," he said. "This in turn enabled the trapped light waves to be released."

The Lehigh researchers describe their structure as a "metallic grating structure with graded depths, whose dispersion curves and cutoff frequencies are different at different locations." In appearance, the grating resembles the pipes of a pipe organ arranged side by side and decreasing gradually in length from one end of the assembly to the other. The degree of grade in the grating can be tuned by altering the temperature and modifying the physical features on the surface of the structure.

The structure arrests the progress of light waves at multiple locations on the surface and at different frequencies. Previous researchers, Gan says, had been able "to slow down one single wavelength within a narrow bandwidth, but not many wavelengths over a wide spectrum."
Most of the initial work on this project has been theoretical, using mathematical equations and computer simulation. Bartoli's group has now moved to the next stage, which includes fabricating and characterizing the structures.

"It will be challenging," Gan says, "to achieve a grade of grating depths which range from very shallow to as much as 50 nanometers on a 200-nm substrate. To do this, we are using the focused ion beam milling facilities in the materials science and engineering department. We have already fabricated many structures and will now try to characterize the graded gratings with near-field scanning optical microscopy in Prof. Volkmar Dierolf's lab in the physics department.

"We are pursuing promising applications based on these structures. These include biosensing and bioimaging."

An article in the Feb. 14 issue of the British journal New Scientist said the results obtained by Bartoli's team "suggest that one day we might be able to slow down light long enough to store it as a 'rainbow' or colors – an advance that would revolutionize computing and telecommunication networks."

Light is stored for a few pico-seconds in the grating structure, the New Scientist article notes. But this, according to physicist Ortwin Hess of the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom, "is quite significant for many applications."