My immediate thought is McClintock’s transposable elements. AFAICT, this has only been mentioned by AI-generated lists in this thread, so to fill in a bit more for anyone who doesn’t know the story: in the 1940s, McClintock observed genetic and cytological evidence from crosses of corn plants, which she argued could best be explained by assuming certain genetic elements routinely change their position in the genetic map, often breaking other genes when they insert, and restoring those genes again when they excise. For context, the discovery that genes had fixed positions on linear genetic maps that were collinear with chromosomes was still relatively new (1913), and the field of genetics was largely consumed by the job of determining these maps. Her interpretation was therefore very much against the current, and it was mostly dismissed and derided. But she was right. It wasn’t until molecular biology confirmed their existence in the 60s-70s that transposable elements (“jumping genes”) became widely accepted. She got the Nobel Prize for her discovery over four decades after she made it.
I take it the reason for asking for such case studies is that singular discoveries can be exceptionally impactful, so it would be good to enrich for them. Therefore it’s of interest to ask what happened to McClintock in the intervening decades. My understanding is that she was able to continue her work the entire time, despite the skepticism of the field, due entirely to the Carnegie Institute. Carnegie Institute created a permanent position at Cold Spring Harbor Lab specifically for her, freeing her from teaching and administrative obligations, but more importantly, shielding her from the need for peer acceptance of her ideas (peer-reviewed grants, peer-reviewed papers). Importantly they backed her permanently and unconditionally, so that she was completely free to pursue whatever drove her curiosity, regardless of anyone else’s opinion, even theirs.
This highlights the huge impact a private benefactor (individual or institution) can have by backing individual innovators. The trick is how to figure out who is worth backing. It’s only impactful if one ignores or even actively anti-correlates with the usual metrics that academia rewards; but some or even most marginalized mavericks are in fact crackpots, so anticorrelating isn’t enough. One has to be confident in positively judging people or ideas to be worthwhile, without relying on evaluations by leaders and experts.
My immediate thought is McClintock’s transposable elements. AFAICT, this has only been mentioned by AI-generated lists in this thread, so to fill in a bit more for anyone who doesn’t know the story: in the 1940s, McClintock observed genetic and cytological evidence from crosses of corn plants, which she argued could best be explained by assuming certain genetic elements routinely change their position in the genetic map, often breaking other genes when they insert, and restoring those genes again when they excise. For context, the discovery that genes had fixed positions on linear genetic maps that were collinear with chromosomes was still relatively new (1913), and the field of genetics was largely consumed by the job of determining these maps. Her interpretation was therefore very much against the current, and it was mostly dismissed and derided. But she was right. It wasn’t until molecular biology confirmed their existence in the 60s-70s that transposable elements (“jumping genes”) became widely accepted. She got the Nobel Prize for her discovery over four decades after she made it.
I take it the reason for asking for such case studies is that singular discoveries can be exceptionally impactful, so it would be good to enrich for them. Therefore it’s of interest to ask what happened to McClintock in the intervening decades. My understanding is that she was able to continue her work the entire time, despite the skepticism of the field, due entirely to the Carnegie Institute. Carnegie Institute created a permanent position at Cold Spring Harbor Lab specifically for her, freeing her from teaching and administrative obligations, but more importantly, shielding her from the need for peer acceptance of her ideas (peer-reviewed grants, peer-reviewed papers). Importantly they backed her permanently and unconditionally, so that she was completely free to pursue whatever drove her curiosity, regardless of anyone else’s opinion, even theirs.
This highlights the huge impact a private benefactor (individual or institution) can have by backing individual innovators. The trick is how to figure out who is worth backing. It’s only impactful if one ignores or even actively anti-correlates with the usual metrics that academia rewards; but some or even most marginalized mavericks are in fact crackpots, so anticorrelating isn’t enough. One has to be confident in positively judging people or ideas to be worthwhile, without relying on evaluations by leaders and experts.