Yesterday, 09:47 PM
They Were Told “Science Is Settled.” They Refused to Stop Asking Questions.
History has a funny way of treating people who challenge popular beliefs.
Sometimes, the person everyone calls wrong turns out to be right.
And sometimes, they have to suffer before people finally listen.
Here are some remarkable examples.
James Lind, 1747
Sailors were dying from scurvy, a disease that causes weakness, bleeding gums and eventually death.
Many people believed it was caused by bad air or poor living conditions.
Lind tested different treatments on sailors and discovered something simple: citrus fruits like lemons and oranges helped stop scurvy.
But the Navy did not immediately accept his findings.
It took decades before the Navy fully adopted citrus as part of sailors' diets.
Ignaz Semmelweis, 1847
Doctors were going straight from examining dead bodies to helping women give birth.
They often did not wash their hands.
Semmelweis told them to wash their hands with a disinfectant called chlorinated lime.
The result was dramatic.
Deaths in his hospital ward dropped from about 18% to 2%.
Instead of being celebrated, many doctors became angry because his discovery suggested that doctors themselves were spreading deadly infections.
He was pushed out of his position and later died in an asylum.
Alfred Wegener, 1912
Wegener looked at the shapes of the continents and noticed something strange.
Africa and South America, for example, looked as though they could fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
He argued that the continents were not permanently fixed. They slowly move.
Many scientists laughed at the idea.
Today, plate tectonics, the movement of huge pieces of Earth's outer layer, is a basic part of geology.
Wegener died before his idea was widely accepted.
Joseph Goldberger, 1914
Many doctors believed pellagra, a serious disease that can cause skin problems, weakness and mental changes, was caused by infection.
Goldberger disagreed.
He believed it was caused by poor nutrition.
To prove that pellagra was not contagious, he even exposed himself to material from sick patients.
He did not become sick.
His wife also volunteered.
His research eventually helped establish that pellagra was linked to a lack of certain nutrients, especially niacin.
Barbara McClintock, 1951
Scientists generally believed genes stayed in fixed positions on chromosomes.
McClintock discovered something surprising.
Some genetic elements could actually move around within chromosomes.
Her discovery was largely ignored for years.
She eventually received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983, at the age of 81.
She received it alone.
Frances Kelsey, 1960
A drug called thalidomide was being marketed in other countries to help pregnant women with morning sickness.
The drug company wanted approval in America.
Frances Kelsey, a doctor and FDA reviewer, was not convinced that the safety evidence was strong enough.
The company pressured her repeatedly.
She refused to approve it.
The drug was eventually linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies around the world.
Her decision helped prevent the same disaster from happening on a large scale in the United States.
John Yudkin, 1972
For years, many experts strongly focused on dietary fat as a major cause of heart disease.
Yudkin argued that sugar also deserved serious attention.
His career was dismantled by the men with the rival theory, and his book returned from the dead forty years later.
Bernard Fisher, 1970s
For many years, women with breast cancer were often given a very aggressive operation called a radical mastectomy.
It involved removing the breast and much of the surrounding tissue and muscles.
Fisher helped show that, for many women, less extensive surgery could provide similar survival outcomes.
That research helped change breast cancer treatment and spared many women unnecessarily extensive surgery.
Barry Marshall, 1984
For years, many doctors believed stomach ulcers were mainly caused by stress and lifestyle.
Marshall and Robin Warren discovered a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori, or H. pylori, in the stomachs of people with ulcers.
To demonstrate his belief, Marshall famously drank a preparation containing the bacteria.
He developed stomach inflammation.
He then treated himself with antibiotics.
His work helped transform the understanding and treatment of many ulcers.
He later received the Nobel Prize.
Christopher Ramsden, 2016
Ramsden and his colleagues examined old records from a large nutrition study that had been conducted decades earlier.
The study had compared saturated fat with corn oil.
The results were more complicated than the simple message people had heard for years.
Lowering cholesterol did not automatically translate into the expected reduction in deaths.
The lesson is important: old data can sometimes tell us something different when researchers look at it carefully.
The Bigger Lesson
These stories do not mean that every unpopular idea is correct.
They also do not mean that scientists are always wrong or that scientific consensus should be ignored.
The real lesson is simpler:
Science is supposed to follow evidence, not popularity.
A person can be wrong while disagreeing with the majority.
But the majority can also be wrong.
The important question is not:
“How many people believe this?”
The better question is:
“What does the evidence actually show?”
Sometimes progress begins when someone is brave enough to ask that question again.
Source:
https://www.facebook.com/1334883797/post...hf9hMHBWl/
History has a funny way of treating people who challenge popular beliefs.
Sometimes, the person everyone calls wrong turns out to be right.
And sometimes, they have to suffer before people finally listen.
Here are some remarkable examples.
James Lind, 1747
Sailors were dying from scurvy, a disease that causes weakness, bleeding gums and eventually death.
Many people believed it was caused by bad air or poor living conditions.
Lind tested different treatments on sailors and discovered something simple: citrus fruits like lemons and oranges helped stop scurvy.
But the Navy did not immediately accept his findings.
It took decades before the Navy fully adopted citrus as part of sailors' diets.
Ignaz Semmelweis, 1847
Doctors were going straight from examining dead bodies to helping women give birth.
They often did not wash their hands.
Semmelweis told them to wash their hands with a disinfectant called chlorinated lime.
The result was dramatic.
Deaths in his hospital ward dropped from about 18% to 2%.
Instead of being celebrated, many doctors became angry because his discovery suggested that doctors themselves were spreading deadly infections.
He was pushed out of his position and later died in an asylum.
Alfred Wegener, 1912
Wegener looked at the shapes of the continents and noticed something strange.
Africa and South America, for example, looked as though they could fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
He argued that the continents were not permanently fixed. They slowly move.
Many scientists laughed at the idea.
Today, plate tectonics, the movement of huge pieces of Earth's outer layer, is a basic part of geology.
Wegener died before his idea was widely accepted.
Joseph Goldberger, 1914
Many doctors believed pellagra, a serious disease that can cause skin problems, weakness and mental changes, was caused by infection.
Goldberger disagreed.
He believed it was caused by poor nutrition.
To prove that pellagra was not contagious, he even exposed himself to material from sick patients.
He did not become sick.
His wife also volunteered.
His research eventually helped establish that pellagra was linked to a lack of certain nutrients, especially niacin.
Barbara McClintock, 1951
Scientists generally believed genes stayed in fixed positions on chromosomes.
McClintock discovered something surprising.
Some genetic elements could actually move around within chromosomes.
Her discovery was largely ignored for years.
She eventually received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983, at the age of 81.
She received it alone.
Frances Kelsey, 1960
A drug called thalidomide was being marketed in other countries to help pregnant women with morning sickness.
The drug company wanted approval in America.
Frances Kelsey, a doctor and FDA reviewer, was not convinced that the safety evidence was strong enough.
The company pressured her repeatedly.
She refused to approve it.
The drug was eventually linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies around the world.
Her decision helped prevent the same disaster from happening on a large scale in the United States.
John Yudkin, 1972
For years, many experts strongly focused on dietary fat as a major cause of heart disease.
Yudkin argued that sugar also deserved serious attention.
His career was dismantled by the men with the rival theory, and his book returned from the dead forty years later.
Bernard Fisher, 1970s
For many years, women with breast cancer were often given a very aggressive operation called a radical mastectomy.
It involved removing the breast and much of the surrounding tissue and muscles.
Fisher helped show that, for many women, less extensive surgery could provide similar survival outcomes.
That research helped change breast cancer treatment and spared many women unnecessarily extensive surgery.
Barry Marshall, 1984
For years, many doctors believed stomach ulcers were mainly caused by stress and lifestyle.
Marshall and Robin Warren discovered a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori, or H. pylori, in the stomachs of people with ulcers.
To demonstrate his belief, Marshall famously drank a preparation containing the bacteria.
He developed stomach inflammation.
He then treated himself with antibiotics.
His work helped transform the understanding and treatment of many ulcers.
He later received the Nobel Prize.
Christopher Ramsden, 2016
Ramsden and his colleagues examined old records from a large nutrition study that had been conducted decades earlier.
The study had compared saturated fat with corn oil.
The results were more complicated than the simple message people had heard for years.
Lowering cholesterol did not automatically translate into the expected reduction in deaths.
The lesson is important: old data can sometimes tell us something different when researchers look at it carefully.
The Bigger Lesson
These stories do not mean that every unpopular idea is correct.
They also do not mean that scientists are always wrong or that scientific consensus should be ignored.
The real lesson is simpler:
Science is supposed to follow evidence, not popularity.
A person can be wrong while disagreeing with the majority.
But the majority can also be wrong.
The important question is not:
“How many people believe this?”
The better question is:
“What does the evidence actually show?”
Sometimes progress begins when someone is brave enough to ask that question again.
Source:
https://www.facebook.com/1334883797/post...hf9hMHBWl/