Stigler's law of eponymy states simply that no discovery in science is ever named for its primary originator. There are many examples of this throughout science, including the biomedical sciences. A few, such as Job syndrome or Terry Thomas sign, were deliberately named for someone other than the discoverer.
On this page:
Examples
- Capps triad
- Conn syndrome
- Crohn disease
- foramen of Monro
- Job syndrome
- Lemierre syndrome
- Plummer-Vinson syndrome
- Rotter nodes
- Spigelian hernia
- Terry-Thomas sign
- Valsalva maneuver
- Virchow triad
Exceptions
It is unsurprising that across the centuries of biomedical research, a few eponyms have been correctly named after the actual originator of the idea.
- the Seldinger technique was named after Sven-Ivar Seldinger, and good documentary evidence shows him to have invented the technique
History and etymology
Stephen M Stigler (b. 1941), an American economist at the University of Chicago, first posited his law in an article in 1980 1. He intended his "law" to be self-consistent i.e. that other individuals had previously stated similar sentiments 2.
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