Here are some comments I posted elsewhere. Opposition to new ideas is common in all fields of science, technology and commerce. You can find examples from every era in history. I doubt the problem is worse now than it was in the past. There are various reasons why scientists oppose new ideas, for example because they are conservative, or unimaginative, or jealous. But I think in most cases it comes down to money. Take the opposition to the MRI. I believe this was mainly from corporations and people who make a living with x-ray equipment, including CAT scanners, which compete with the MRI.
Here is an important ramification. When x-rays were introduced in the late 19th century, there was no opposition to them. Why? Because there was no established industry selling equipment that let doctors see inside patients. There were no vested interests that would be hurt by this particular machine. Minicomputer companies did not oppose microcomputers (PCs) in the late 1970s and early 80s. The minicomputer companies thought that PCs could never compete. A top manager at a computer company told me that PCs were mere "toys" that could never be large enough to do useful work. That is why they did not take them seriously, and it is also why they did not try to make their own PCs until it was too late, after IBM and Apple were firmly established. This is a corollary to Stan Szpak's dictum: "scientists believe whatever you pay them to believe." They also attack whatever you pay them to attack. This is also what Upton Sinclair had in mind when he said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" Scientists sometimes claim they oppose cold fusion because it appears to violate theory, or because it is not supported by theory. We know this is not true for two reasons. First, Tom Passell of EPRI said that many of the most vocal opponents in 1989 were quietly applying to EPRI for funding to research cold fusion. I assume they were yelling and carrying on in public to prevent other people from applying for funds. In other words, to reduce competition. Second, there are countless claims in modern science that have little or no theoretical basis, and no experimental evidence, such as multi-universe theory and string theory. There is no opposition to this research because it does not threaten anyone's funding. The fact that a discovery may have practical applications, or that it might save thousands of lives or billions of dollars has no bearing on whether scientists will support or oppose it. Only one metric predicts their reaction: if they themselves will benefit financially from the research, they support it. If it will hurt them, they oppose it. This is also true of doctors, corporations, politicians, consumers, programmers and everyone else in society. The use of the chronometer for navigation is one of the clearest examples of a beneficial invention blocked by scientists to protect their own jobs. The chronometer was perfected in the late 18th century. Combined with the sextant, by the first decades of the 19th century it greatly improved navigation, preventing hundreds of shipwrecks, lost lives and the equivalent of billions of dollars in losses. It was tremendously important to the Royal Navy, similar to the way today's GPS systems are. Unfortunately, the chronometer competed with the lunar navigation system which was being funded and coordinated by the British Royal Astronomer. This project employed hundreds of England's astronomers, costing the equivalent of millions of dollars. It continued until 1912. So, the astronomers did all they could to sabotage the use of chronometers and prevent them from being used. See Dava Sobel's book "Longitude" for details. (This is getting off topic, but to understand the depravity of the British scientists who fought against chronometers, you have to realize that shipwrecks were as common in the 18th and 19th centuries as automobile accidents are today. There were thousands every year. Here is a map of shipwrecks for the first 6 months of 1873 in the British Isles: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6qvuFUMAp9HNW5oU08yaHVmLXc/view?usp=sharing The chronometer greatly reduced the carnage. There were even more wrecks 70 years before this.) - Jed
