Mental inertia in the biological sciences

Often, new discoveries are not made at the moment when all of the necessary techniques and background knowledge become available. Instead, they are delayed as a result of mental inertia unrecognized by the scientist and/or the scientific community. In this paper, I introduce and classify various typ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in biochemical sciences (Amsterdam. Regular ed.) 2010-03, Vol.35 (3), p.125-128
Main Author: Shneider, Alexander M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitude
Biological Science Disciplines - methods
Biological Science Disciplines - trends
Humans
Program Development
Research - trends
Research Design
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Summary:Often, new discoveries are not made at the moment when all of the necessary techniques and background knowledge become available. Instead, they are delayed as a result of mental inertia unrecognized by the scientist and/or the scientific community. In this paper, I introduce and classify various types of mental inertia that are common in science, using examples from the field of biology.
ISSN:0968-0004
1362-4326
DOI:10.1016/j.tibs.2009.12.004