100 years from now everyone will be laughing at the supposed "settled science" of today.
Galileo and scientific consensus “In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual”
In 1847 Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that disinfection of the hands significantly reduced the incidence of puerperal fever in obstetric clinics. Puerperal fever was the single most common cause of maternal mortality in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the scientific consensus did not accept Semmelweis’ empirical evidence but dismissed his findings, often with contempt.
He did not accord with the established opinion of the day and was considered by some to have no scientific basis for his claims. Others were insulted by the idea that their hands were being described as “dirty”.
It was also pointed out that Semmelweis was saying nothing new. In 1843 Oliver Wendell Holmes, had published an essay on the contagiousness of puerperal fever but his views were attacked by the scientific establishment. Sadder still is the fact that in 1795, Dr. Alexander Gordon had published a paper on the contagious nature of puerperal fever and the importance of the right hygiene practices in order to prevent its spread. His paper acknowledged the strong opposition he confronted and the attempts to suppress the truth.
How many lives could have been saved if the scientific consensus had not been so stubborn? Nobody in the scientific establishment today would dare to describe the findings of Gordon, Holmes or Semmelweiss as stupid but it was not always so.
USA Symposium opposes Continental Drift
On January 6th 1912, Alfred Wegener presented his hypothesis on Continental Drift but the scientific consensus was unimpressed. He was unable to support his circumstantial evidence with a specific mechanism that explained it. He speculated that centrifugal force might be responsible or the astronomical precession. In spite of the opposition of the scientific consensus he continued to develop his ideas and a symposium was specifically organised in the United States in opposition to his hypothesis.
In 1943 the noted palaeontologist George Gaylord Simpson strongly attacked Wegener’s position in the American Journal of Science and this influenced those who had been sympathetic to change their views.
Once again the scientific establishment backed the wrong man. Wegener’s inability to posit the right physical mechanism did not mean that his hypothesis was wrong, but it was the primary reason the consensus was against him. In addition he committed the cardinal crime of not actually being an expert. Wegener was not a geologist so his evidence apparently lacked authority.
The history of science is littered with occasions when the scientific consensus has wrongly challenged the minority voice and in so doing has impeded the progress of science.
Closed minds, personal offence, political and social constraints have all played their part in preventing proper consideration of the data. This was then exacerbated by the way professional credibility was questioned, motives were misrepresented and individuals were vilified.
The top 10 most spectacularly wrong widely held scientific theories
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2010/1...ularly-wrong-widely-held-scientific-theories/
In 1949, Antonio Egas Moniz achieved the Nobel Prize of Physiology and Medicine for discovering the great therapeutic value of lobotomy, a surgical procedure that, in its transorbital versions, consisted of introducing an ice pick through the eye's orbit to disconnect the prefrontal cortex. Thousands of lobotomies were performed between the decade of 1940's and the first years of 1960's, including Rosemary Kennedy, sister of President John F. Kennedy, on the list of recipients; all of them with the scientific seal of a Nobel Prize.
