The Semmelweis' reflex
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Mob behaviour found among primates and larval hominids on undeveloped planets, in which a discovery of important scientific fact is punished rather than rewarded. Named after Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, who discovered the cause of puerperal fever, a now-obsolete disease which, in Semmelweis's primitive era, killed a vast number of women in childbirth every year. Semmelweis was fired from his hospital, expelled from his medical society, denounced and ridiculed widely, reduced to abject poverty and finally was beaten to death in a madhouse.
Timothy Leary in The Game of Life.
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