Reducing the ‘latency period’ for the acceptance of new scientific ideas: Positioning the ‘latency period’ for the acceptance of scientific ideas as an indicator of scientific maturity

There is often an inordinate time span from the time a new idea is gestated till it is widely accepted in scientific and in popular circles, with wide variations commonly observed across geographies and disciplines. This elapsed time may be referred to as the ‘latency period’ for the acceptance, or even a structured and a justified rejection, as the case may be, of new or novel ideas. This can be observed in most societies around the world, unfortunately even in more advanced ones. There is also a variation across geographies to the detriment of developing countries, and across disciplines to the detriment of various fields in the social sciences. Indeed, we have analyzed the possible root causes of all these in our paper, and all these must be systematically addressed, and new or other root causes identified. This would form a part of what some experts consider a “time crashing” technique. Reducing this latency period will lead to scientific progress at a much higher rate, or “Scientific progress at the speed of light” as we would like to call it. There are many ways to do this. The first would be to improve the education system on the principles we had laid out in our published paper on “Anthropological Pedagogy” and the “Sociology of science”. The second would be to build a robust twenty-first century intellectualism involving the negation of all ideologies which should greatly serve to set the house in order; we have deliberated, and written at length about all these in earlier times. This latency period we believe can be greatly brought down if science becomes a much more global activity, and the ideas and ideals of the “Globalization of science” movement that we have been championing all along are accomplished. Thus, we would effectively be killing two birds with one stone.