Interestingly, there is evidence of pandemics of crystalin forms that contaminate whole laboratories and prevent the preparation of other polymorphs.
Take a look at Jack Dunitz and Joel Bernstein, Disappearing Polymorphs, Acc.Chem.Res. 1995, 28, 193-200.
I cannot avoid making this large quote:
1,2,3,4-Tetra-O-acetyl-beta-D-ribofuranose: The early history of this compound reads like a mistery history. As first prepared in 1946 in Cambridge, England, by Howard, Lythgoe, and Todd, the compound had melting point 58°C.
Virtually the same melting point was measured for material prepared by a different method in Jena by Bredereck and Hoepfner. When several batches of the same material were prepared soon afterward (1949) in a different laboratory on the other side of the Atlantic, in New York, by Davill, Brown, and Visser, the first three preparations had melting points 56-58°C, but the fourth run yielded material with a distinctly higher melting point, 85°C. Around the same time in Jena, by direct acetylation of ribose, Zinner obtained a mixture of two tetraacetyl derivatives, one the ribopyranose and the other the ribofuranose, with a melting point of 82°C for the latter. The two high-melting point compounds appeared to be identical, although the nature of the structurel difference between them and the low-melting form was unknown. So far, so good; innumerable examples of polyphormism are known. The low-melting form can be called A, the high-melting one B.
After some time, however, the melting points of the early New York preparations had risen to 85°C, and it was not longer possible to prepare the A form. A sample of A was sent from Cambridge, but when it was exposed to the air in New York, in a laboratory that contained samples of B, the crystals of A rapidly became opaque and transformed to B. In the meantime, transformation of A to B was also found to have taken place in Cambridge. Since the A form could no longer be obtained in the New York laboratory, further experiments involving this form were moved to distant Los Angeles, where it was shown that when 1 g of A (melting point 57°C) was inoculated with 1 mg of B (melting point 85°C), the melting point of the sample was raised to 75-77°C within 2 h and to 77-79°C overnight. Similar phenomena were observed in Manchester. Low-melting point A was first obtained, but when B was introduced in the laboratory, the whole of the material had the higher melting point and the low-melting form could no longer be prepared.
The saga continued in several laboratories and eventually it was not possible to prepare the A form, till 1981 when the rare A form was prepared again in a laboratory in Budapest.
At that time Budapest was behind the iron curtain, and it undoubtly prevented the contamination with the B form.
https://www.rhodium.ws (https://www.rhodium.ws)
If the phemonemon you speak of is true, then science is bullshit.
I don't contend that the article isn't being trueful, or isn't scientific, but there are many factors at steak (smile).
THe A form is usually only made at a new laboratory, but after the A form is made only B form can be made. This signals to me that there is risdual (sp?) contamination of the compound
The article that Rhodium quoted from did not seem to be ascribing this to any paranormal phenomenom but to contamination by the higher melting form as you suggest. The interesting point of the article is that in the total absence of the B form the lower melting A form would crystallize but even miniscule amounts of the B form would prevent the A form from crystallizing.
This (non-paranormal) subject is very apropos given the recent epidemic of Mad Cow/Cruetzfeld-Jakob disease where the causitive agent is suspected to be a proteinn that has folded into an abnormal form and that catalyzes the transformation of this protein into the abnormal folding.
Who wrote the story "Ice-9"? (Kurt Vonegut?) I have never read it but have heard that it has a similar theme.