# Ridiculed scientific breakthroughs **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 19, 2009, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698 "2009-09-19T06:09:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jakesteele](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ed8c4c/32.png) [@jakesteele](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jakesteele)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/1 "2009-09-19T06:09:13Z")
What scientific achievement, breakthrough, invention, discovery in the last couple hundred years or so has met with the most resistance and ridicule before it was vindicated? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/2 "2009-09-19T06:32:07Z")
In 1915 Alfred Wegener continental drift theory was ridiculed. > **[Alfred Wegener](https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html)** > [@](#): > > Reaction to Wegener’s theory was almost uniformly hostile, and often exceptionally harsh and scathing; Dr. Rollin T. Chamberlin of the University of Chicago said, “Wegener’s hypothesis in general is of the footloose type, in that it takes considerable liberty with our globe, and is less bound by restrictions or tied down by awkward, ugly facts than most of its rival theories.” Part of the problem was that Wegener had no convincing mechanism for how the continents might move. Wegener thought that the continents were moving through the earth’s crust, like icebreakers plowing through ice sheets, and that centrifugal and tidal forces were responsible for moving the continents. Opponents of continental drift noted that plowing through oceanic crust would distort continents beyond recognition, and that centrifugal and tidal forces were far too weak to move continents – one scientist calculated that a tidal force strong enough to move continents would cause the Earth to stop rotating in less than one year. Another problem was that flaws in Wegener’s original data caused him to make some incorrect and outlandish predictions: he suggested that North America and Europe were moving apart at over 250 cm per year (about ten times the fastest rates seen today, and about a hundred times faster than the measured rate for North America and Europe). There were scientists who supported Wegener: the South African geologist Alexander Du Toit supported it as an explanation for the close similarity of strata and fossils between Africa and South America, and the Swiss geologist Émile Argand saw continental collisions as the best explanation for the folded and buckled strata that he observed in the Swiss Alps. Wegener’s theory found more scattered support after his death, but the majority of geologists continued to believe in static continents and land bridges. > > What prompted the revival of continental drift? In large part it was increased exploration of the Earth’s crust, notably the ocean floor, beginning in the 1950s and continuing on to the present day. By the late 1960s, plate tectonics was well supported and accepted by almost all geologists. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/3 "2009-09-19T06:37:44Z")
It would be really hard to say - virtually every new idea was ridiculed and you’d have to come up with an arbitrary measure for how bad. “Big Bang” was meant as a derogatory term, for example. There was fierce debate over the existence of atoms (fueled at least in part by a French vs English, Descartes vs Newton kind of feud), quantum mechanics (Einstein’s “God does not play dice with the universe” was his attempt to refute QM), plate tectonics… even the germ theory of disease and sterile operating rooms got a lot of objections. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/4 "2009-09-19T06:42:11Z")
I won’t say that it never happens, but the popular idea that scientific discoveries or breakthroughs are commonly and widely ridiculed when first announced is a myth. As for inventions, some of them deserve ridicule. How about the Segway scooter? ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/5 "2009-09-19T07:00:47Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > As for inventions, some of them deserve ridicule. How about the Segway scooter? Self-balancing vehicles are not ridiculous! What is ridiculous is this innovation exists as one model made by one company. Worse, the company has incredibly short sight, significant hubris, and no sense of aesthetics. As soon as the patent runs out, expect all the Chinese to be riding some variation of it. (I’ll take mine with a seat). ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/6 "2009-09-19T07:03:34Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > I won’t say that it never happens, but the popular idea that scientific discoveries or breakthroughs are commonly and widely ridiculed when first announced is a myth. Not most, but some. Continental drift takes the cake for now, but cold fusion will best it soon enough 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/7 "2009-09-19T07:08:28Z")
I thought evolution met with wide resistance, both before and after it was verified, and it’s still getting disrespect today. The moon landing is taught as faked in Cuba and other countries. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/8 "2009-09-19T07:26:06Z")
I remember the invention of the hovercraft being met with derision. (Much too noisy to be of any conceivable use) Space exploration. (What IS the point of it?)And lets face it just how have artificial satellites enhanced our lives?(Irony warning,irony warning!) Currently in ths world of archaeology those claiming to have discovered Pre Clovis sites in N.America are getting more then their fair share of stick. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/9 "2009-09-19T07:39:26Z")
Panspermia was quite literally laughed at, and then quickly scorned and dismissed by the teacher when it was briefly mentioned in my science class ~15 years ago. Now it is being taken much more seriously. But why does this question come up so often? Everybody thinks their little pet hypothesis will be next. ---
**Author:** ![scm1001](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c4cdca/32.png) [@scm1001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scm1001)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/10 "2009-09-19T07:52:39Z")
the idea that many diseases as caused by viruses and bacteria were resisted e.g. cancer, ulcers ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/11 "2009-09-19T08:06:44Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > I thought evolution met with wide resistance, both before and after it was verified, and it’s still getting disrespect today. > > The moon landing is taught as faked in Cuba and other countries. I dislike the dictator of Cuba, but something is not correct, The USSR accepted the landings as real and in those days, what the soviets said then the Cubans followed. I would not be surprised that many Cubans are skeptical, but it seems that official channels are not hiding what took place in 1969 on the moon. Here is a recent take on the subject from a teacher in Cuba: > **[The Moon Landing & Woodstock Anniversaries - Havana Times](https://havanatimes.org/diaries/dimitri/the-moon-landing-woodstock-anniversaries/)** > > This summer, two anniversaries were commemorated: one was the first landing on the Moon by a human (astronaut Neil Armstrong), and the other was the momentous Woodstock rock festival. Both events well recalled on specially-dedicated Cuban television... > [@](#): > > **This summer, two anniversaries were commemorated: one was the first landing on the Moon by a human (astronaut Neil Armstrong), and the other was the momentous Woodstock rock festival. Both events well recalled on specially-dedicated Cuban television programs.** > > As a Russian - and the bearer of a soul that some describe as “romantic” - I feel that stepping around on the Moon is possibly sacrilegious. That’s why I’m happy it wasn’t the Soviets (who did everything possible at that time to get there, with their N-2 rocket), nor the Chinese (who perhaps will be the next lunar visitors). Instead, it was the pragmatic Americans who were the first ones to make it to the Moon’s surface. > > \*\*The programs on Cuban TV included segments of US documentaries with interviews of several astronauts about the Apollo mission. I was greatly impressed with how those astronauts spoke; they did so with a tremendous sense of reverence, humility, respect, and poetry… \*\* Most of the Americans I know are usually not so romantic; they drink a lot of beer, eat steak and popcorn, and they like to watch American football on TV, even when they’re in England. > > However, the astronauts that went to the Moon spoke like poets, like spiritual souls. I was moved. One said that after having been there, he could never complain about the weather or the traffic, he no longer cared; it was nothing in comparison with the condition of the most solitary person in the universe. > > He was happy to return and see a lot of people in the street, that that was a great blessing for him. He noted there were no people on the Moon, that they were alone there. In fact, they were utterly alone in that place, and they saw our planet as utterly tiny. > > I had read that in Russia there was no broadcast on television showing the Americans landing on the Moon in 1969. But the members of the Politburo of the Communist Party (CPSU), as well as other important people, did indeed see it in a room with a special TV monitor. When Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the Moon’s surface, for a second they didn’t know what to do. It was the enemy country that had made it there, they had landed first. > > The USSR had lost the space race. However Soviet cosmonauts were also in the room, and when Armstrong first stepped on the Moon they began to applaud. Then the entire Politburo of the CPSU also applauded, exuberantly, celebrating those human beings who were there, who had made it there, so far away and so close to death. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/12 "2009-09-19T08:11:21Z")
[Prions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion) were derided as nonsense by many scientists for quite some time as I recall. > [@Cisco](#): > > But why does this question come up so often? Everybody thinks their little pet hypothesis will be next. “They laughed at Galileo!” “They laughed at Bozo the Clown too.” ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/13 "2009-09-19T09:25:45Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > The moon landing is taught as faked in Cuba and other countries. I wouldn’t call the moon landing a breakthrough in science so much as one in engineering. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/14 "2009-09-19T11:48:56Z")
Meteorites. “_A stone cannot fall from the sky. There ARE No stones in the sky_” Antoine Lavoisier, father of modern chemistry. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/15 "2009-09-19T13:42:13Z")
Semmelweis was widely ridiculed for practicing sepsis in delivery, even though his patients didn’t die of childbed fever. Darwin was certainly ridiculed. Was it Bishop Berkeley who asked if he claimed to be descended from an ape on his mother’s or father’s side? Wegener has been mentioned already. Einstein notwithstanding, quantum mechanics was not ridiculed, although older physists had trouble accepting it. Neither special nor general relativity was ridiculed. Cold fusion got less ridicule than it deserved. Remember that skeptical is what scientists are supposed to be. That, IMHO, explains why so few are believers. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/16 "2009-09-19T13:45:14Z")
There seems to be just one source for the claim that Cuban schools teach that the moon landing was fake, someone named James Oberg. I can’t find anyone else making that claim. GIGObuster above gives some evidence that schools in Cuban don’t teach any such thing. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/17 "2009-09-19T13:54:39Z")
“Black hole” was a derogatory term to ridicule the idea that infinitely dense mass points existed. Einstein’s contention that gravity bends light was met with smug skepticism, until it was confirmed during a solar eclipse. Einstein did not believe that the universe was expanding, although I don’t think he ridiculed Hubble. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/18 "2009-09-19T14:04:42Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > [Prions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion) were derided as nonsense by many scientists for quite some time as I recall. I don’t think it was derided so much as treated with strong skepticism - rightly so. It was, and is, a radical new theory, and as such needed strong evidence to support it. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/19 "2009-09-19T14:17:12Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > I thought evolution met with wide resistance, both before and after it was verified, and it’s still getting disrespect today. Nonsense. Other than the normal conservatism that resists any change in paradigm, the general concept of evolution was widely accepted even before Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace presented a coherent theory of natural selection as the mechanism for evolutionary change. Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, advanced theories for evolution of species (albeit more limited), and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck published his then widely accepted theory of _inheritance of acquired characteristics_ which influenced Darwin’s own thinking (albeit in contrary fashion). Darwin’s theory of natural selection was challenged on technical grounds for not having a defined means of inheritance, which was not resolved until Hugo de Vries tied together Darwin’s theories with Gregor Mendel’s experimental work and Theodor Boveri identified chromosomes as being the particular carriers of inherited information, which then led to modern evolutionary synthesis and the central dogma of molecular biology (that information goes from nucleic acid to protein, but not from protein to nucleic acid or another protein). However, the general concept of evolution was widely accepted if tacitly even by conservative institutions such as the Catholic Church, and today is only contested by religious fundamentalists who maintain their belief via devout ignorance of natural science. > [@Cisco](#): > > Panspermia was quite literally laughed at, and then quickly scorned and dismissed by the teacher when it was briefly mentioned in my science class ~15 years ago. Now it is being taken much more seriously. I’m not quite sure what you mean here. The Urey-Miller experiment demonstrated that the basic amino acids could be spontaneously generated in a number of conditions in a reducing atmosphere like that thought to have existed on primordial Earth. That life may exist independently elsewhere has not been seriously doubted by biologists, although for the general public this notion seems to be surprising. Whether complex (multi-cellular) or sentient life exists is still a topic for extensive debate and to date, no hard data either way to justify any position. If you are referring to Fred Hoyle’s theory that life on Earth came from elsewhere, while it may be possible it doesn’t seem to be justified by necessity. One area that was significantly ridiculed before coming into wide (nearly universal) acceptance is endosymbiotic theory, that is, that many organelles inside eukaryotic cells are actually developed from prokaryotic organisms which formed a symbiotic relationship with their host and eventually relinquished their own independent reproductive capability. Mitochondria, for instance, which have their own chromosomes, are subservient and rely upon their hosts for reproduction, so they are carried down the matrilineal germ line (always inherited from the mother). In turn, mitochondria produce and regulate energy for the cells, and may have been the key to developing specialized cellular function that lead to cooperative multicellular organisms. The theory was originally advanced by Constantin Mérejkovsk in 1909, but not widely disseminated until Lynn Margulis published “The Origin of Mitosing Eukaryotic Cells” in 1966, and generally regarded as a fringe theory until advances gene sequencing and molecular imaging in the 1980s validated her claims. Another theory that was widely ridiculed even by some of its progenitors was quantum mechanics. Although it was Max Planck who first demonstrated the quantitization of emitted energy in order to achieve a fit of blackbody radiation to experimental observation, he regarded this as being merely a mathematical formalism and believed that some other phenomena was at work, later hoping that developments in wave mechanics would invalidated the apparent limitations of quantitization. However, Einstein demonstrated with his explanation of the photoelectric effect that energy was indeed absorbed and radiated only at given quanta for a specific frequency, although these conclusions were not accepted by almost the entire generation of older physicists, wedded to classical electromechanics. Einstein in turn refused to accept the objectionable non-local interactions that fell out of the theory quantum mechanics even after it was demonstrated that the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox was invalid by John Stewart Bell’s theorem. Examples of this can be found in pretty much all major scientific revolutions. It is interesting to note that while resistance to change of the status quo of knowledge of the natural world is a generally conservative position and has often stimulated social and political innovation, most major _political_ revolutions have subjected genuine scientists and technical innovators to persecution in favor of political expediency and favoritism; see the persecution of scientists and mathematicians during the French Revolutionary Reign of Terror (including the execution of Antoine Lavoisier on trumped up charges) and the repression of philosophically unpalatable science and promotion of politically correct pseudoscience (Lysenkoism) in the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin that led to the deaths by starvation of tens of millions of people. The persecution of Jewish and Slavic scientists in Nazi Germany, and general suppression of scientific research that did not lead directly to the development of arms technology led to many of those scientists going to Britain and eventually the United States to work on the development of radar and the atomic bomb program, much to the detriment of the Axis forces. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698/20 "2009-09-19T15:05:15Z")
Mendeleev was ridiculed while defending his doctoral dissertation on the periodic table. I believe they told him it would make as much sense to list the elements in alphabetical order. And I don’t think Wegner’s Continental Drift was a real scientific breakthrough. People had speculated about how the continents fit together before, and Wegner’s theory was just plain wrong. Plate tectonics != Continental Drift. And cold fusion? Didn’t that deserve ridicule too? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ridiculed-scientific-breakthroughs/510698.md?page=2)