Who Got It Wrong First?

We are always debating on who got it right first. To whom the paternity/maternity of an idea should go to. It goes without saying (and is too often not said) that a fair amount of garbage, mistakes would have been produced in the process of producing said idea, and well forgotten.
This idea resurfaced with this nice article reviewing Gavin Menzies’ book on Leonardo Da Vinci about how

1. he might have gotten his ideas from the Chinese. And I’m thinking “Didn’t everyone speak Chinese in 15th Century Italy ?”
2. He made some errors. And I’m thinking: “What! Even geniuses are given flax for making mistakes?”

So, in the light of the controversial book, I thought I should unveil some other overlooked scientists / researchers / idea poppers. These underdogs might be unknown to most people but their ideas live, because someone who speaks the right language took up their idea…

Bose / Einstein

Buang / Wallace (and Darwin)

Constantine Rafinesque / Darwin

This leads to the term of the day: “Rafinesquian”, to mean “rejected for having recognized too many genera and species on the basis of very inadequate characters, the term being one of reproach”.