In 1988, my doctoral thesis on the  psychoacoustics of pitch and tone was rejected at London University. The work had challenged the psychophysical import of the string ratio theory of musical pitch intervals by Pythagoras around which turn all work in hearing. I demonstrated experimentally, and insisted that the string ratio theory concealed in it a fundamental mechanical error at the root of psychoacoustic failure in music and speech perception research. No one was inclined to listen. For me, it was a mighty fall.