An aspect of this that is seldom remembered is that Semmelweiss was a HUGE jerk, which didn't help adoption. Instead of telling or showing other doctors how things could be better, he called them barbarian murderers for not washing their hands. It was a decade before he'd even have a civil conversation about it, or publish for peer review.

There's a lesson in that...sometimes being right isn't enough on it's own.

Semmelweis also couldn’t explain why his procedure supposedly worked. Again that’s hugely problematic: a sound theory requires an explanatory framework. Otherwise it’s just not convincing.

That the laparascopic pioneer's name is Semm is unreal. You couldn't make it up.

Wow, given the context, I just immediately assumed it was coined because of the story OP detailed. An incredible coincidence!

to paraphrase randall munroe, what are the odds that we would have two unrelated US presidents whose names both started with T-R-U-M ?

I found this definition very strange, from its choice of words and mentioning “undeveloped planets”?!

"Mob behavior found among primates and larval hominids on undeveloped planets, in which a discovery of important scientific fact is punished"

The article concedes that it is a "polemical definition" -- it may still be the first documented usage.

It was irony.

This effect is currently happening on Alzheimer's research: people, including veteran experts, are rejecting the viral theory because it's so crazy.

Maybe in a few years we'll lament that...