Further Reading: Planck's Principle and Its Exceptions

Essential

Azoulay, P., Fons-Rosen, C., & Graff Zivin, J. S. (2019). "Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?" American Economic Review, 109(8), 2889–2920. The definitive empirical test of Planck's principle. Uses data on prominent scientist deaths to demonstrate that fields open to outsiders and new ideas after gatekeepers die. (Tier 1)

Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press. Kuhn's paradigm shift theory is the philosophical context for Planck's principle. His emphasis on crisis-driven change is complicated by cases (plate tectonics) where change occurred without crisis. (Tier 1)

Fast Correction Cases

The Montreal Protocol and the ozone hole response are documented by the United Nations Environment Programme and multiple scientific histories. (Tier 2)

The plate tectonics revolution is documented in Oreskes (1999) and multiple histories of earth science. (Tier 2)

The Deep Learning Revival

The history of neural networks' suppression and revival has been documented by AI historians and in retrospectives by the key researchers involved, including Hinton, LeCun, and Bengio. (Tier 2)

For Instructors

The six-variable framework makes an excellent analytical exercise. Present students with two correction cases (one fast, one slow) and ask them to score each variable. The comparison reveals why structural conditions, not evidence quality, determine the timeline — which is the chapter's central message.