ABSTRACT
In science, as in other human endeavours, progress is sometimes delayed by a “double-take,” to borrow a term from the comic theatre. The message is first met with silence, only later to be followed by a painful dawn of understanding. Recall the silence that greeted Mendel’s theory of heredity in 1866. Not until 1900 did three scientists experience a double take and alert the world to genetics. Delay of the “take:” 34 years.
