Today’s column What’s the story on prions, which supposedly cause mad cow disease? - The Straight Dope from 2001 leaves the prion question kind of up in the air. What is the latest info?
The controversy had died down and many former critics now support the prion hypothesis. A major experiment in 2004 showed proteins and only proteins were able to cause a prion disease. No other infections agent was needed.
I’m sure there are still some critics. Sometimes, it just takes time for one generation to die out before the controversy completely disappears. Evolution had its many critics when Darwin first come out with the Theory of Evolution via Natural and Sexual Selection since Darwin himself could not name the actual mechanism.
Almost all of those critics changed their mind when Gregor Mendel’s experiements came to light in 1905. However, some still persisted. It’s hard to throw out decades of knowledge and starting from scratch – even for a distinguished scientist.
Other ideas still take time. The idea that autism isn’t caused by cold, overly intellectual parenting or bad weaning is still held by a few psychologists who are unabashed Freudians. Walter Alvarez came up with the deadly comet hypothesis of dinosaur extinction back in the 1970s, but it wasn’t generally accepted until the mid-1990s when the Crater of Doom was actually identified.
Now, of course, there’s questions whether all dinosaurs were doing jus’ fine until the meteor dropped, or they were dying out anyway, and whether some dinosaurs actually did survive the initial impact, but petered out anyway. Or, maybe it was all volcanic activity anyway… After all, that’s what killed off all the proto-mammals and allowed the dinosaurs to take over anyway.
That’s the fun thing about science, you learn something as solid fact (All dinosaurs were big stupid cold blooded lizards and they couldn’t complete with mammals) and find out years later, it’s completely wrong! (You mean Pluto isn’t a planet? Then where’s my pizzas?*)
(*My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas)