[multidim]

To summarize it for the curious in a hurry: intellectual phase lock is the tendency for people in science/intellectual-endeavors to publish/assert results that are not too far from what other people are getting. With this tendency, it can take a while for a (science) community to drift from a fashionable, wrong belief to a more correct belief. thijser's comment[0] is a good example of intellectual phase lock.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21113365