Semmelweis Reflex

Established hierarchies do not embrace revolutionary ideas. They exist to defend the status quo. They reject revolutionary ideas reflexively, without giving them the slightest thought.

Here’s one historical example. In 1848, Ignaz Semmelweis, a trained physician, collected iron-clad experimental data showing that having a physician wash his hands in a chlorine solution prior to the delivery of a baby reduced the maternal death rate in his clinic from 18% to 1% – yet twelve years later, due to the medical hierarchy’s reflexive rejection of his ideas, the death rate at that same clinic had doubled to 35%. Semmelweis became distraught at the resulting unnecessary deaths, so his “friends” had him committed to an insane asylum, where he fought to be released – as any sane person would – and was beaten to death.

Semmelweis’ experience was not an isolated incident – far from it. To quote Reuven Brenner’s excellent book, Rivalry (with links added):

Murray’s (1925), Tratnner’s (1938), Polanyi’s (1974), Cohen’s (1985), and Ben-Yahuda’s (1985) detailed and systematic studies of scientists reveal the same pattern: In spite of evidence, innovations were frequently greeted with disdain and incredulity by members of the profession where the innovations were to be applied, professions were hierarchies depended on preserving the paradigms. The reaction to Mesmer’s hypnotic cures, Jenner’s An Inquiring into the Cause and Effects of the Varioloe Vaccination (1798), to Simpson’s discovery of chloroform (1847), to Lyell’s publication of Principles of Geology (1830-33), to Helmholtz’s discovery of the conservation of energy (1847), to Joule’s discovery of the mechanical equivalent of heat (1843), to Darwin’s, Pasteur’s, Lister’s, or more recently Barbara McClintock’s and Benoit Mandelbrot’s and other discoveries and innovations shows the same patterns that Morison described in the military and the ones described in this book concerning the world of business.

First, the innovations came frequently from outsiders: Pasteur was a chemist; Helmholtz’ training was in medicine; Darwin started with medicine, arts, then wanted to become a clergyman; Huxley turned from physiology to paleontology; Lamarche from botany to zoology; [Julius] Robert Mayer was a physician (he came up with the idea of conservation of energy, and Helmholtz was annoyed that this idea was conceived by an “unknown physician”); as was Thomas Young, a Quaker to boot; Barbara McClintock, a woman working at a small research institute; and so on.

Polanyi (1974, p. 54), who examines these and additional cases, concludes that the hatred against the discoverers of facts that threatened the cherished beliefs of science was as bitter as that of religious persecutors two centuries before and was of the same character.

These observations are made in numerous studies examining patterns of behavior not only across very different fields but also different countries and times.

In honor of Semmelweis’ tragic but exceedingly common experience, the dismissing or rejecting out of hand any information, automatically, without thought, inspection, or experiment is termed “the Semmelweis Reflex.”

Does the existence of the Semmelweis Reflex mean that innovation is impossible? Obviously not, since you're alive to read this, which you almost certainly would not be if the ideas of Semmelweis, Pasteur, Lister, etc. had continued to be rejected. What it means is that thre's no point attacking established hierarchies directly. Instead, an innovator must build its own hierarchy -- what Bhaskar Chakravorti would call a new equilibrium -- without engaging the established hierarchy directly. Harvard's Clayton Christensen endorses this approach, saying that "disruptive products require disruptive channels."

As Everett Rogers points out in Diffusion of Innovations, the adoption of new ideas is a social process. Invention is just the start of the diffusion process, and quite possibly the easiest part, given the resistance of the status quo. Knowing this, investors and innovators can put their efforts into ideas that offer the greatest chance for successful and profitable diffusion.