{"id":1121,"date":"2021-07-01T23:32:57","date_gmt":"2021-07-01T23:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jamesandwells.com\/?p=1121"},"modified":"2022-01-27T23:36:27","modified_gmt":"2022-01-27T23:36:27","slug":"lessons-in-innovation-from-stiglers-law-of-eponymy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jamesandwells.com\/nz\/lessons-in-innovation-from-stiglers-law-of-eponymy\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons in Innovation from Stigler\u2019s Law of Eponymy"},"content":{"rendered":"
I recently came across an idea called Stigler\u2019s law of eponymy. It\u2019s a quirky but neat idea that interests me because I think it teaches us some useful lessons about innovation and patent protection.<\/h6>\n
Stigler\u2019s Law of Eponymy<\/h6>\n

Stigler\u2019s law of eponymy says that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer. It is a \u2018law\u2019 in the sense that it observes a commonly observed trend (as opposed to being a theorem, which applies with absolute certainty).<\/p>\n

This is an interesting phenomenon and we\u2019ll look at examples of it in action shortly. But what really grabbed my attention about Stigler\u2019s law is that it is self-referential, and deliberately so. Stephen Stigler, the statistics professor after whom the law is named, intentionally appropriated the idea from sociologist Robert Merton so that the law itself follows its own principle. Very neat.<\/p>\n

Stigler\u2019s Law in Action<\/h6>\n

There are many examples of Stigler\u2019s law in science and mathematics. Halley\u2019s Comet was not discovered by Edmund Halley; the earliest observations of the comet date back to at least 240 BC. Pythagoras\u2019 Theorem was known to Babylonian mathematicians earlier than Pythagoras. Fibonacci did not discover his namesake sequence of numbers; they were first described by Indian mathematicians in ancient times and other European mathematicians after that.<\/p>\n

The law also applies outside the world of science, for example in geo-politics. The New World is replete with place names that are named after an Old World explorer rather than the indigenous people who first discovered them: Mount Cook; Ayers Rock; Mount Everest; the Tasman Sea (although many such geographical features are reverting to their original, indigenous names).<\/p>\n

There are also examples of misnamed inventions in the world of technology. The Bessemer process, an industrial process for mass-producing steel from iron, may be one example. The process is likely to have existed in Asia for several centuries before Henry Bessemer obtained a patent for the process in 1856, and an American inventor William Kelly is claimed to have also discovered the process in 1851.<\/p>\n

The Matthew Effect and Miscredit for Inventions<\/h6>\n

A similar idea is the Matthew Effect. This is the observation that already-eminent scientists usually get more credit for an idea than comparatively unknown people, even if the unknown people got there first, or in collaboration with the eminent scientist.<\/p>\n

This effect is commonplace in the world of invention. Many well-known inventions were not invented by the people to whom credit is traditionally given. Here are just a few examples (of very, very many):<\/p>\n