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RIDICULED DISCOVERERS,
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2002 William Beaty |
While it's true that at least 99% of Extraordinary Claims are just as crazy as they seem, we cannot dismiss every one of them without any investigation. If we do, then we'll certainly fall into the class of scoffers who throughout history stigmatized and dismissed a large number of major scientific discoveries. Beware! Many apparantly "sane" discoveries such as powered flight and drifting continents look sane to us because we have such powerful HINDsight.It's a shame that there are all those diamonds hidden in the sewage. Since the "diamonds" exist, then whenever we automatically discard the huge loads of "sewage," we'll accidentally discard major valid discoveries such as those below.
"When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." - Jonathan Swift
"Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable." -J. W. Goethe
"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false." -Paul Johnson
His idea that electrolytes are full of charged atoms was considered crazy. The atomic theory was new at the time, and everyone "knew" that atoms were indivisible (and hence they could not "lose" or "gain" any electric charge.) Because of his heretical idea, he only received his university degree by a very narrow margin.
Astronomers thought that gravity alone is important in solar systems, in galaxies, etc. Alfven's idea that plasma physics is of equal or greater importance to gravity was derided for decades.
When the first television system was demonstrated to the Royal Society (British scientists,) they scoffed and ridiculed it.
Everyone knows that dinosaurs are like Gila monsters or big tortoises: large, slow, and intolerant of the cold. And they're all colored olive drab too! :)
In the end Chandra was driven out of England and moved his research to the U. of Chicago
Proposed a theory of the optical Doppler Effect in 1842, but was bitterly opposed for two decades because it did not fit with the accepted physics of the time (the Ether theory.) He was finally proven right in 1868 when W. Huggins observed red shifts and blue shifts in stellar spectra. Unfortunately this was fifteen years after he had died.
"They call me the frogs' dance instructor."
His discovery of blood circulation caused the scientific community of the time to ostracize him.
Kept secret his discovery of non-Euclidean geometry for thirty years because of fear of ridicule. Lobachevsky later published similar work and WAS ridiculed. After Gauss' death his work was finally published, but even then it took decades for Noneuclidean Geometery to win acceptance among the professionals.
Invented in 1982, surface scientists refused to believe that atom-scale resolution was possible, and demonstrations of the STM in 1985 were still met by hostility, shouts, and laughter from the specialists in the microscopy field. It's discoverers won the Nobel prize in 1986, which went far in forcing an unusually rapid change in the attitude of colleagues.
In 1970 Margulis was not only denied funding but subjected to intense scorn by reviewers at the NSF. "I was flatly turned down," Margulis said, and the grants officers added "that I should never apply again." Textbooks today quote her discovery as fact; that plant and animal cells are really communities of cooperating bacteria.
Mayer's original paper was contemptuously rejected by the leading physics journals of the time.
Stomach ulcers are caused by acid. All physicians knew this. Marshall needed about ?? years to convince the medical establishment to change their beliefs and accept that ulcers are a bacterial disease.
Ohm's initial publication was met with ridicule and dismissal. Approx. ten years passed before scientists began to recognize its importance.
Physicists "knew" that chips and transistors could only be made of expensive slices of single-crystal silicon. Ovshinsky's breakthrough invention of glasslike semiconductors was attacked by physicists and then ignored for more than a decade. Ovshinsky was bankrupt and destitute when finally the Japanese took interest and funded his work. The result: the new science of amorphous semiconductor physics, as well as inexpensive thin-film semiconductor technology (in particular the amorphous solar cell, photocopier components, and writeable CDROMS sold by Sharp Inc. and other Japanese companies.)
Semmelweis finally ended up in a mental hospital.
An AC motor which lacks brushes was thought to be an instance of a Perpetual Motion Machine.
Warren and his team at Princeton tracked down a Magnetic Resonance anomaly and found a new facet to MRI theory: spin interactions between distant molecules, including deterministic Chaos effects. Colleagues knew he was wrong, and warned him that his crazy results were endangering his career. Princeton held a "roast", a mean-spirited bogus presentation mocking his work. Warren then began encountering funding cancellations. After approx. seven years, the tide of ridicule turned and Warren was vindicated. His discoveries are even leading to new MRI techniques. See: SCIENCE NEWS, Jan 20 2001, V159 N3, "spin Control" (cover story)
After their Kitty Hawk success, The Wrights flew their machine in open fields next to a busy rail line in Dayton Ohio for almost an entire year. American authorities refused to come to the demos, and Scientific American Magazine published stories about "The Lying Brothers." Even the local Dayton newspapers never sent a reporter (but they did complain about all the letters they were receiving from local "crazies" who reported the many flights.) Finally the Wrights packed up and moved to Europe, where they caused an overnight sensation and sold aircraft contracts to France, Germany, Britain, etc.
Zweig published quark theory at CERN in 1964 (calling them 'aces'), but everyone knows that no particle can have 1/3 electric charge. Rather than receiving recognition, he encountered stiff barriers and was accused of being a charlatan.