We rely on prior scientific discovery by researcher’s who are long time gone; or we recognize their findings as true only after their scientific break-through becomes common knowledge.

Accepting a (fresh) research-finding is difficult because it breaks one (or more than one) old perceptions. Finding something new is also difficult for the same reason. It is all about our conservative intelligent foundations and the will to go beyond them.

This is what I believed to be the main reason why it is impossible for simple minds to make breakthrough findings in science. But it is not just he perception, it is something even simpler. It is our nescience of taking granted everything we see, without asking the questions.

Faraday has put this one nicely in one of this letters:
“I was this morning called by a trifling circumstance to notice the peculiar motions of camphor on water; I should not have mentioned the simple circumstance but that I thought the effect was owing to electricity, and I supposed that if you were acquainted with the phenomenon, you would notice it. I conceive, too, that a science may be illustrated by those minute actions and effects, almost as much as by the evident and obvious phenomena. Facts are plentiful enough, but we know not how to class them; many are overlooked because they seem uninteresting: but remember that what led Newton to pursue and discover the law of gravity, and ultimately the laws by which worlds revolve, was–the fall of an apple.”

Dr. Bence Jones, Faraday’s Life and Letters, Vol. I, Pg 25