The paper replaces the romantic “unrecognized genius” story with a conditional structural hypothesis.
Its propositions are:
- P1 — Recognition bias: present recognition favors legible, institutionally dense forms.
- P2 — Tail-renewal value: some high-distance contributions later expand a field’s repertoire.
- P3 — Coupling: among contributions with independently documented later uptake, greater initial distance predicts lower recognition and longer provenance lag.
- P4 — Machine acceleration: composition systems may reproduce concepts before stable source recognition forms.
The paper does not treat every neglected figure as one mechanism. It distinguishes:
- non-publication or restricted circulation;
- commercial or critical neglect;
- demographic exclusion and misattribution;
- independent rediscovery;
- catalogic disappearance.
Seven adjacent literatures are brought into relation, including cumulative advantage, the Matilda effect, cultural consecration, social reproduction, invisible AI labor, model collapse, and canon formation.
The proposed empirical design requires:
- independent measurement of tail distance;
- matched comparison classes;
- independently documented later uptake;
- provenance-loss and recognition-lag measures;
- type-specific controls.
The hypothesis is falsified if high-distance, later-used contributions receive recognition comparable to matched lower-distance contributions or if attribution loss does not covary with tail distance and structural position.