# Darwin was wrong about the human appendix and theories proven wrong ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 8, 2019, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885 "2019-09-08T17:11:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/1 "2019-09-08T17:11:52Z")
So Darwin said that the appendix in humans, is a vestigial organ, which I believe current research has proven to be incorrect. This thread is about such scientific theories that we learnt as kids (say the 80s) which have been proven wrong. Understand that the evolution of science works to correct itself as new data is available and older laws/theories are modified (like Newton’s law becomes a special case of Relativity at lower speeds). So what are some of these theories that have done a U-turn instead of being a special case of a broader theory ? I can think of some examples and welcome other posts: 1. Appendix is a vestigial organ 2. Eating fats will make you fat 3. Glass is a supercooled liquid evidenced by the old glass at European churches which get thicker in the bottom due to slow flow of glass 4. Trees in the forest compete for light and bigger trees smother out smaller trees. Trees don’t cooperate with each other. ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/2 "2019-09-08T17:21:56Z")
Another one of my favorite pet peeve is the misrepresentation of the solar system in school books (at least when I was growing up). It’s very hard to show the solar system to scale on textbook pages especially if Pluto is included. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/3 "2019-09-08T17:35:34Z")
Dinosaurs were sluggish reptiles that substituted brawn for intelligence and became extinct when mammals came along: wrong on all counts. ---
**Author:** ![pmwgreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@pmwgreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pmwgreen)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/4 "2019-09-08T17:52:54Z")
Can you enlarge on this? > [@](#): > > 1. Trees in the forest compete for light and bigger trees smother out smaller trees. Trees don’t cooperate with each other. When Linnaeus first described his system, he named only two kingdoms – animals and plants. In school we were taught that fungi was a third. Today it’s up to five with something called protists and monera. Pluto isn’t a planet, we never learned about Ceres. The asteroids are all over the place, not just in the Asteroid belt. Today, there are getting to 800000 named asteroids, with 10000 or so crossing Earth’s orbit. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/5 "2019-09-08T17:57:57Z")
“Continental drift” was a discredited crackpot theory when I was in school. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/6 "2019-09-08T18:02:40Z")
The belief that stomach ulcers were caused by stress or diet. It’s now known the primary cause is a bacterial infection. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/7 "2019-09-08T18:08:11Z")
The still pervasive belief that being out in the cold causes ‘a cold’. (and ninja’d by Nemo on ulcers) ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/8 "2019-09-08T18:09:34Z")
Trees compete AND cooperate. Depending on many complex factors. Eating fats WILL make you fat, if you eat more calories than you burn. But it’s a complex subject. Much like trees. Also, a significant minority of ulcers have no bacterial cause. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/9 "2019-09-08T18:24:24Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > “Continental drift” was a discredited crackpot theory when I was in school. In ninth grade Earth Science I did a paper on what was believed to be the cause of mountain building back then. IIRC heavy deposits in the ocean pushed up mountains on the shore kind of like a seesaw. Also, large dinosaurs like the Brontosaurus were thought to spend all their time in water because they were too heavy to walk on land. There was some thought that lunar craters were formed by volcanic action, though meteor strikes were also a cause. ---
**Author:** ![Arkcon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/10 "2019-09-08T18:30:48Z")
A good way to start is with this wikipedia article.: [List of common misconceptions - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions) ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/11 "2019-09-08T18:31:11Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > 1. Eating fats will make you fat > 2. Glass is a supercooled liquid evidenced by the old glass at European churches which get thicker in the bottom due to slow flow of glass I don’t know that these were actual scientific theories so much as wives tales. The demonization of fats, I think, was a propaganda campaign funded by the sugar industry. The glass thing was just something someone said, and everybody else agreed it sounded good. It’s important we get the context right when we talk about “Science had it wrong!” stories. Often, science didn’t get it wrong, just some random people said “this is probably the scientific explanation”, and it was neither correct nor scientifically researched. Science does get things wrong occasionally, but that’s part of the process. Science is allowed to self-correct, unlike other systems of belief. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/12 "2019-09-08T18:39:50Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > So Darwin said that the appendix in humans, is a vestigial organ, which I believe current research has proven to be incorrect. Not exactly. [“Vestigial” does not equate to “useless”.](https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/55796/is-vermiform-appendix-no-more-a-vestigial-organ) ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/13 "2019-09-08T19:21:01Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Science does get things wrong occasionally, but that’s part of the process. Science is allowed to self-correct, unlike other systems of belief. As a person of science myself, I am with you in the spirit of your post. However over the past few years some gross events in science have come to light that has left me wondering. Two such events are : 1. The reproducibility crisis in one area of science : [Is there a reproducibility crisis? A Nature survey lifts the lid on how researchers view the 'crisis rocking science and what they think will help - Document - Gale OneFile: Health and Medicine](https://go.galegroup.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA454730385&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00280836&p=HRCA&sw=w) 2. The widespread practice of p-hacking also in one area of science : [Data dredging - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging) ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/14 "2019-09-08T19:50:35Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > As a person of science myself, I am with you in the spirit of your post. > > However over the past few years some gross events in science have come to light that has left me wondering. Two such events are : > > 1. The reproducibility crisis in one area of science : [Is there a reproducibility crisis? A Nature survey lifts the lid on how researchers view the 'crisis rocking science and what they think will help - Document - Gale OneFile: Health and Medicine](https://go.galegroup.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA454730385&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00280836&p=HRCA&sw=w) > > 2. The widespread practice of p-hacking also in one area of science : [Data dredging - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging) Those are concerning as to the overall confidence in science that is currently being done, but I think it’s also a useful feature that science can say “here are some places where we are going wrong, here’s how it is happening.” ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/15 "2019-09-08T21:36:38Z")
> [@pmwgreen](#): > > When Linnaeus first described his system, he named only two kingdoms – animals and plants. In school we were taught that fungi was a third. Today it’s up to five with something called protists and monera. IIUC, the latest systems based on DNA and other biochemical information combines animals and fungi into a single kingdom but still ends with eight major kingdoms: **Bacteria:** **Archaeota:** **Excavata:** Euglena, etc. **Rhizaria:** Foraminifers, etc. **Chromalveolata:** Diatoms, Brown & Golden Algae, Ciliates, etc. **Archaeplastida:** Green Plants, Green & Red Algae, Glaucocystids, etc. **Amoebozoa:** Slime molds, Amoebozoids **Opisthokonta:** Animals, Fungi, Trichoplax adhaerens The final six in this list form the Eukaryota Empire. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2019, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/16 "2019-09-08T21:42:58Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > It’s important we get the context right when we talk about “Science had it wrong!” stories. Often, science didn’t get it wrong, just some random people said “this is probably the scientific explanation”, and it was neither correct nor scientifically researched. Cannonical example: the “Science has proven that bumblebees can’t fly” nonsense. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2019, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/17 "2019-09-09T00:51:23Z")
> [@pmwgreen](#): > > Pluto isn’t a planet, we never learned about Ceres. The asteroids are all over the place, not just in the Asteroid belt. None of those are things that science got wrong. 1. Reclassifying Pluto as a minor planet changed nothing we knew about that object. It was just a change in classification, done for bureaucratic reasons. (I know I’m running the risk of restarting the Pluto Wars here. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.) 2. There’s only so many things you can teach in limited school time, so it’s not surprising you didn’t learn every fact about the Solar System. And they sometimes intentionally simplify things taught in the lower grades, mostly to make them easier to teach amd learn. Ceres was discovered in 1800; various asteroids that are not in the main belt had been known about well before you were in school. You not learning these facts in school is a matter of both simplification and lack of time to teach everything. ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2019, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/18 "2019-09-09T02:08:53Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > The glass thing was just something someone said, and everybody else agreed it sounded … David Halliday was a physicist from the University of Pittsburgh and also worked at MITs Radiation lab. Robert Resnick was a science Educator from U of Pittsburgh and RPI. Both were aware receiving Physics textbook authors and yet : Halliday & Resnick’s freshman physics text (4th edition, 1992) claimed that glass flows in windows (at the beginning of the chapter on fluids). Can you please explain what you mean by someone said something … ? ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2019, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/19 "2019-09-09T03:26:15Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > Another one of my favorite pet peeve is the misrepresentation of the solar system in school books (at least when I was growing up). It’s very hard to show the solar system to scale on textbook pages especially if Pluto is included. A diagram that isn’t to scale is not a “misrepresentation.” ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2019, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885/20 "2019-09-09T08:05:53Z")
> [@am77494](#): > > 1. Trees in the forest compete for light and bigger trees smother out smaller trees. Trees don’t cooperate with each other. Seems that they do; well, to some extent anyway. > [@](#): > > Wise old mother trees feed their saplings with liquid sugar and warn the neighbors when danger approaches. Reckless youngsters take foolhardy risks with leaf-shedding, light-chasing and excessive drinking, and usually pay with their lives. Crown princes wait for the old monarchs to fall, so they can take their place in the full glory of sunlight. It’s all happening in the ultra-slow motion that is tree time, so that what we see is a freeze-frame of the action. > Read more: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/#ujABQZXZWjIxRgvE.99](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/#ujABQZXZWjIxRgvE.99) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-human-appendix-and-theories-proven-wrong/839885.md?page=2)