There is an often-heard slogan about the stages of the acceptance of novel truths:
First people deny a thing.
Then they belittle it.
Then they say they knew it all along.
I don’t know who was first to state it in one form or another. Here’s Schopenhauer with a slightly different variant:
“All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
After recently presenting my paper criticizing the Birnbaum result on the likelihood principle (LP)[1] the reception of my analysis seems somewhere around stage two, in some cases, moving into stage three (see my blogposts of December 6 and 7, 2011). Continue reading
