There’s the Dreyfus affair, where it was alleged that senior members of the French intelligence and military services, and political establishment, had conspired to frame Alfred Dreyfus for espionage, and this allegation turned out to be completely true.
That might be true, but it is not a conspiracy theory nor has it been shown to be true.
Not exactly. The planting of evidence against Dreyfus was the work of junior officers. The senior establishment was involved in a coverup that perpetuated the injustice out of bigotry and fear that digging too deep for the truth would compromise the military’s reputation and harm France.
The truth-seekers in the Dreyfus Affair don’t qualify as a tiny fringe group ridiculed by the vast majority. The military verdict was disputed very early on, influential people (like Emile Zola) got involved, and the whole thing played out in a deeply divided France with major players on both sides.
Seconded. To give a current example (the JFK conspiracy thread in GD), when one’s speculations and theories about how Oswald was not a lone gunman get blown up, it is not a useful counter to shout “MKULTRA!!!”
I don’t think Pasteur ever actually claimed germs are conspiring against us.
Are you seriously trying to compare conspiracy theories to the scientific method?
I hate to tell you this, dude, but that theory was never considered crackpot. It was accepted truth for the vast majority of human beings who are not Republicans.
When Smash cites Pasteur’s “germ theory of sickness”, it’s not clear whether he’s alluding to contemporaries pooh-poohing Pasteur’s ideas, or to the claims (common among proponents of alternative medicine) that Pasteur himself conspired to suppress competing theories about disease, and even more bizarrely that Pasteur was all wrong, and his ideas promulgated to benefit Big Pharma and assorted conspiracies.
“Big Brother promoted the disease theory of fraud and plagiarist Pasteur and suppressed the true one of Bechamp, for the simple reason there would be no market for vaccines and most drugs, and no ability to generate Fear (his main mind control ploy) by The Virus hunters, and such dependence on doctors$$$, or use vaccines to create a huge market from vaccine diseases eg smallpox vaccine, or for genocide in his depopulation agenda, while disguising the disease fallout from his lucrative use of chemicals like pesticides, eg Polio & BSE.”
Google “Pasteur germ theory wrong” and you’ll find lots of similar rantings and ravings.
Frequently advocates of some far-out medical/scientific theory will attempt to justify their beliefs by saying “They laughed at Galileo!” Or Semmelweis. Or other respected figure whose ideas took awhile to earn respect.
The standard skeptical riposte is “Yes…and they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” 
How does this relate to the OP? Are you suggesting it is confirmed as true?
I saw this thread and was going to post that. It’s a perfect example that’s just been confirmed.
This has been confirmed. Intelligent design is simply an attempt to pass off creationism in secular garb in order to get past the prohibition of religious teachings in public schools. This has absolutely been proven. In fact, it was largely a cut and paste replacement of “creationism” with “intelligent design”, as this video shows: cdesign proponentsists
Many times I’ve mentioned views or theories held by minorities of professionals in a given field (eg/ Penrose’s quantum brain model, Jaynes’ bicameral mind theory, Jung’s archetypal psychology, et al.) and been greeted with hostile pack behaviour by the denizens of SD, snickering and guffawing and slapping each other on the back for successfully flinging dung at the strange monkey which attempted to defy the reigning wisdom of the pack’s silverbacks. I was aware of several instances where people like Pasteur or Copernicus has been the recipients of similar behaviour for defying the groupthink, and often use them to remind people that “commonly accepted” doesn’t mean “true.” I thought it would be nice to have a few more examples at hand.
What’s “perfectly correct” is that we know the Spanish didn’t blow up the Maine in a deliberate act of war. Whether the sinking of the Maine was an accident or deliberate sabotage by the US itself we may never know, but that’s unimportant for my purpose – namely, to show that just because a whole bunch of people desperately want something to be true, it doesn’t make it true.
The link between the two is that in both cases the minority view is mocked and derided, and later found to be correct. I don’t object to disagreement, just the mocking and jeering tone of those who believe they have a monopoly on Truth™.
When Pasteur proposed that it was tiny, invisible animals which made people sick, the reaction of the medical profession was much rude guffawing, ridicule, and mockery while they operated on patients with the same unwashed hands they’d just used to wipe their shitty asses. Their behaviour reminds me very much of the kind of behaviour I often see on SD; it’s fine to be skeptical, it’s just obnoxious (and potentially dangerous) to be closeminded and condescending.
I made it a point to see the program when it was on television. Am I right that the conspiracy was revealed and determined to be a conspiracy in a court of law? That was fascinating.
Oh, it was considered crackpot indeed that the President of the United States could possibly be involved in a “third-rate burglary.” (Nixon was later named an unindicted co-conspirator for his part in the coverup.)
No, Rove’s involvement in the attorney firings is not a perfect example, because most people who have heard of the case thought Rove was probably behind it, just that there was no smoking gun and so it couldn’t be proved.
So, suppose in the next year someone releases a memo from Cheney ordering torture at Gitmo or some such. This would be an example of a conspiracy by Cheney and his minions, but it wouldn’t be an example where the idea of the conspiracy was laughed at and mocked by all right-thinking people, and only believed by a fringe. This is because most people who have been paying attention already know that Cheney was pushing for torture. Documentary evidence of that wouldn’t be an earth-shattering revelation, just a confirmation of what most observers already believe.
And my point about the “They laughed at Galileo” stories remain. Many of these stories are simply fabrications, or only tell part of the story. Yes, Galileo was forced to recant that the Earth revolves around the Sun. But what they don’t tell you was that Galileo openly ridiculed the Pope in his book. That’s what pissed off the Pope, not Galileo’s ideas about celestial mechanics. It wasn’t that his ideas were declared wrong and then he was persecuted for them. They decided he was a jerk who needed to be kicked in the ass, and therefore declared his ideas were heresy, not the other way around.
And the skepticism about the Wright Brothers is similarly less than meets the eye. Sure, people were skeptical, but that was because they hadn’t yet seen the demonstration of the Wright flyer. It isn’t persecution to ask to see the contraption actually work. Sure there were those who declared that mankind would never fly, that if we were meant to fly God would have given us wings, and so on. But those were the crackpots, not the mainstream. The mainstream reaction was “The Wright Brothers claim to have built a working airplane? Well, it’s easy to claim that, but I’ll believe it when I see it.”
No, we don’t know that. We have no idea of all who was responsible. Spain is just one of the possible suspects, including even a decent chance it was an accident. In fact- deliberate sabotage by the USA is just about the lowest possibility. (The top three are - in order- An accident, Cuban freedom fighters wanting to blame it on the Spanish in order to lure the USA in, and extremists in the Spanish military)
In actuality, Pasteur managed to finally bring the scientific profession around. He had evidence, something that his predecessors had little of- Semmelweis (who had some statistical evidence, but no theory), Fracastorius, Agostino Bassi & Henle were indeed laughed at, but not Pasteur to the extent you are thinking of.
Although Pasteur did develop the correct theory, it was actually Lister who put it into practice. Lister’s techniques were met with wide acclaim by the medical community (in just two years), although of course there are always doubters.
wiki "*He also made surgeons wear clean gloves and wash their hands before and after operations with 5% carbolic acid solutions. Instruments were also washed in the same solution and assistants sprayed the solution in the operating theatre. One of his conclusions was to stop using porous natural materials in manufacturing the handles of medical instruments.
Lister left Glasgow in 1869, returning to Edinburgh as successor to Syme as Professor of Surgery at the University of Edinburgh, and continued to develop improved methods of antisepsis and asepsis. His fame had spread by then and audiences of 400 often came to hear him lecture.
As the germ theory of disease became more widely accepted, it was realised that infection could be better avoided by preventing bacteria from getting into wounds in the first place. This led to the rise of sterile surgery. Some consider Lister “the father of modern antisepsis.”"*
In other words, again- no conspiracy theory, no “the Man” holding bad the truth.
Now it’s true that Semmelweis was widely mocked and his ideas gained no general acceptance. That is because he had no theory to back his idea- which was against what was then accepted Scientific and Medical Theory. However, when Pasteur proved it scientifically a couple of decades later there was general acceptance, although of course it wasn;t immediate- new took quite some time to travel then.
wiki "Semmelweis’ observations went against all established scientific medical opinion of the time. The theory of diseases was highly influenced by ideas of an imbalance of the basic “four humours” in the body, a theory known as dyscrasia, for which the main treatment was bloodlettings. Medical texts at the time emphasized that each case of disease was unique, the result of a personal imbalance, and the main difficulty of the medical profession was to establish precisely each patient’s unique situation, case by case.
The findings from autopsies of deceased women also showed a confusing multitude of various physical signs, which emphasised the belief that puerperal fever was not one, but many different, yet unidentified, diseases. Semmmelweis’ main finding — that all instances of puerperal fever could be traced back to only one single cause: lack of cleanliness — was simply unacceptable. His findings also ran against the conventional wisdom that diseases spread in the form of “bad air”, also known as miasmas or vaguely as “unfavourable atmospheric-cosmic-terrestrial influences”. Semmelweis’ groundbreaking idea — that harmful infectious particles could sit in minuscule amounts on fingers — was contrary to all established medical understanding.
As a result, his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Other more subtle factors may also have played a role. Some doctors, for instance, were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands; they felt that their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean.[19]
Specifically, Semmelweis’ claims were thought to lack scientific basis, since he could offer no acceptable explanation for his findings. Such a scientific explanation was made possible only some decades later when the germ theory of disease was developed by Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, and others."
In fact, Semmelwies’ THEORY was incorrect (wiki) “Today it is well known that Semmelweis was wrong about the theory of cadaveric contamination. What Semmelweis did not know is that chlorinated lime not only destroys the stench on contaminated hands, but also the bacteria there—the germ theory of disease had yet to be discovered. Many of the epidemics of childbed fever were probably caused by streptococci infections— either type, A which is commonly found in the throat and nasopharynx of otherwise healthy carriers, or type B which lives on the skin. The B type is also found in the female genitals of about 5-30% of pregnant women.[15] It is therefore necessary for the physician to disinfect hands before every examination and not, as Semmelweis thought, only after visits to the morgue.”
Semmelweis was just a couple decades ahead of Science. He is the closest thing I can find to what you want, but you can hardly blame the Medical community of the time.
Yes. The Dover, PA school board voted to require the teaching of intelligent design as a “scientific” alternative to evolution. They were sued and lost.
Wikipedia has a detailed entry on the case: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District - Wikipedia
The entire PBS documentary is available online (legally) here: NOVA | Intelligent Design on Trial | Watch the Program | PBS
How do you know for sure that the Spanish didn’t blow up the Main in a deliberate act of war?
Of course, it wouldn’t have made much sense for the Spanish Government to order it, since they were trying to avoid a war that they were likely to lose. But it’s possible that someone somewhere in the Spanish military did it anyway. Perhaps not the most LIKELY scenario, but just as plausible as deliberate sabotage by the US government.
Actually, the Spanish really thought they could whup us.:eek: Remember, in those days the USA was not a World Power and Spain still was. One result of the Spanish American War was the start of the USA being a World Power, and the end of Spain being one.
Also, if you’re itching to fight a war, it’s probably not that great an idea to start out by blowing up one of your own most powerful warships. You might need it later.
Spain’s decline began long before that, although I suppose if you’re saying that marked the final proof of Spain’s centuries-long fall, you’d be correct.
(Disclaimer: Spain is undoubtedly a better country today in terms of contributing positively and not inflicting harm than it ever was during its imperial heyday.)
I am confused by the confusion regarding the fate of the USS Maine.
I don’t have an online citation for this, but I have read (I believe in a book by Richard Humble, who has written several books on dreadnought battleships) that Humble calculated that the number of battleships destroyed by internal magazine explosions during peacetime is equal to or even greater than the number destroyed by enemy action. The reason is well-understood: propellant (cordite and its various analogues) becomes unstable over time (similar to the way dynamite “sweats,”) and during long storage occasionally goes kablooey. Replacing huge stores of propellant is expensive, time-consuming, and somewhat dangerous. Governments sooner or later succumb to the temptation to cut costs, and allow the stored propellant to age too long, despite the lessons of previous mishaps.
This has been, sadly, a relatively common fate for battlehips, and it requires neither mine nor coal dust explosion; the magazine just goes off without warning, always destroying the ship.
I suppose it’s possible that coal dust set off the Maine’s magazine, but it’s certainly not required to explain what happened – magazines just blow up during peacetime (fairly frequently) historically. Navies understand this objectively, but when it happens to them, they always look for sabotage (see Clayton Hartwig for a classic example. I don’t even understand why the Navy was looking for an alternative mechanical explanation [the “over-ram” talked about in the article] when it was much-discussed before the accident that the American propellant had aged dangerously during the period before the battleships were reactivated. This was a known – almost an expected – danger.)
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As to your comparison, it’s simply not valid, IMHO. Pasteur was a scientist, not a conspiracy theorist. All new scientific theories are met with skepticism; that’s why science is such an effective tool for exploring our universe. Pasteur SHOULD have been treated with skepticism, as should everyone who comes up with an unusual new theory. Conspiracy theorists are quite the opposite of scientists; they invent claims, and then invent or twist evidence to suit the claims. Lumping Louis Pasteur in with conspiracy loons is silly; it’s like lumping Albert Einstein in with the Timecube guy and saying they’re both “scientists.”
What you seem to be complaining about, really, is that skepticism directed towards you is not skepticism but closed-mindedness. Well, that’s in the eye of the beholder. Everyone tends to think that those who disagree with them are wrong and closed-minded, but the fact is that an intelligent person has to be skeptical and insist on proof for extraordinary claims; as the old saw goes, you can’t be so openminded that your brain falls out.
You think this place is really closed-minded; I don’t see it that way, for the most part. You might find it more open to your ideas if you would support them with more facts and evidence and try to avoid sweeping claims that turn out to be false. I think it’s fair to say that a few posters have been overly closed-minded and assholish to you, but dude, that’s part of being in any community; we’ve got a few pretty big assholes here, and some people who are okay on some topics but turn into assholes on others. I’ve been slapped a few times for being a bit too strident on some issues and I’ve made an honest effort to dial it back. But that’s just being human. You are not special or better than the average schlub.
Might I suggest - in complete sincerity and honesty - that if you find you are having difficulty communicating with people, it might be to your benefit to remember that you is singular and people is plural. I’m not a populist, but it’s a good rule of thumb that when you’re having trouble getting your point across to many other people, there’s really only two possibilities: one is that you’re a genius of such towering intellect that normal humans cannot understand you, and the other is that you’re doing a bad job getting your point across. The odds are very, very heavily in favour of the latter.
I think you’ll find the SDMB is one of the best message boards on the Internet, but you seem to have decided you hate it because most of its members don’t agree with you and fawn over your ideas. If you want to get something out of your time here, might I suggest you dial down the arrogance and condescension just a little bit, let some of the snarkier words roll off your back, and generally turn the other cheek and read a little more than you write. You do seem like an earnest and inherently decent guy and I think you bring a really neat and different perspective to the SDMB and it would be to our benefit for you to stick around.