Most people would say that Science has been a huge success. We all know the of the successes in medical science, agriculture, transportation, communications, computers, etc. etc. But what about Science's failures? Consider the list (below) of important scientific discoveries, including discoveries that led to Nobel prizes, that were initially rejected and ridiculed by mainstream science. Scientists have a huge problem accepting the truth when it contradicts their preexisting beliefs. Science should be judged based on its failures as well as its successes.
There is extensive evidence to support belief in ESP and the afterlife. But mainstream science refuses to acknowledge the truth of these phenomena calling the evidence "pseudoscience". People don't often think about Science's colossal failure to study psi and the afterlife. What could be more important to humanity than our immortality? What could be more important to science than this huge gap in its understanding of the universe? What would the world be like if everyone knew that in the afterlife, they would experience a life review where they felt how their actions affected other people from the other person's point of view? In this regard, Science has failed humanity and itself. Science has given us medicines and conveniences, as well as weapons and pollution, but it has not given us the whole truth.
Most people believe in ESP and the afterlife. This shows that ordinary people can know things that Science denies. Given the difficulty scientists have recognizing important areas for research, the public and politicians should not be afraid to direct research funds into studies of ESP and the afterlife despite mainstream science's rejection of these subjects.
Nobel Prize Winning Discoveries that were First Ridiculed as "Pseudoscience".
(See Notes below for details and references.)
- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar: Black Holes
- Binning, Roher, Gimzewski: Scanning-Tunneling Microscope
- Barbara McClintlock: Mobile Genetic Elements
- Stanley Prusiner: Prions
- Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff: Theory of 3D Molecules
- Peyton Rous: Viruses Transmit Cancer
- Dan Shechtman: Quasicrystals ("There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists." - Linus Pauling, before Shechtman won the Nobel Prize for discovering quasicrystals.)
- Hans Krebs: The Krebs Cycle, Metabolic Energy Production
- Svante Arrhenius: The Properties of Electrolytes are Caused by Charged Atoms
- Hannes Alfvén: Magnetohydrodynamics
- F. Sherwood Rowland, Mario Molina, and Paul Crutzen: Choloroflurocarbons Destroying the Ozone Layer
More Important Discoveries that were First Ridiculed as "Pseudoscience".
Many more important discoveries that were first ridiculed by Science can be found at: amasci.com, megafoundation.org and Crackpots Who Were Right. Here are just a few:
- Alfred Wegener: Contintental Drift
- J Harlen Bretz: Catistrophism in Geology
- Lynn Margulis: Endosymbiotic Organelles
- George Zweig: Quarks
- Warren S. Warren: Flaws in MRI theory
Notes:
Nobel Prize Winning Discoveries that were First Ridiculed as "Pseudoscience".
- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar: Black Holes
From amasci.com:
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (black holes in 1930, squashed by Eddington)
Chandra originated Black Hole theory and published several papers. He was attacked viciously by his close colleague Sir Arthur Eddington, and his theory was discredited in the eyes of the research community. They were wrong, and Eddington apparently took such strong action based on an incorrect pet theory of his own. In the end Chandra could not even pursue a career in England, and he moved his research to the U. of Chicago in 1937, laboring in relative obscurity for decades. Others rediscovered Black Hole theory thirty years later. He won the 1983 Nobel Prize in physics, major recognition only fifty years. Never underestimate the authority-following tendency of the physics community, or the power of ridicule when used by people of stature such as Eddington.
- Binning, Roher, Gimzewski: Scanning-Tunneling Microscope
From amasci.com:
Binning/Roher/Gimzewski (scanning-tunneling microscope)
Invented in 1982, other 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. Its discoverers won the Nobel prize in 1986, which went far in forcing an unusually rapid change in the attitude of colleagues.
- Barbara McClintlock: Mobile Genetic Elements
From amasci.com:
B. McClintlock (mobile genetic elements, "jumping genes", transposons)
Won the Nobel in 1984 after enduring 32 years being ridiculed and ignored
- Stanley Prusiner: Prions
From amasci.com:
Prusiner, Stanley (existence of prions, 1982)
Prusiner endured derision from colleagues for his prion theory explaining Mad Cow Disease, but was vidicated by winning the Nobel.
- Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff: Theory of 3D Molecules
From amasci.com:
Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff (theory of 3D molecules)
As a relative newcomer and unknown, he was attacked and ridiculed for proposing that a 3D tetrahedral structure would explain many problems in chemistry. His foes rapidly went silent, and finally his ridiculous cardboard models won the first nobel prize in chemistry (1901.)
- Peyton Rous: Viruses Transmit Cancer
(Francis) Peyton Rous ForMemRS[1] (October 5, 1879 – February 16, 1970) born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1879 and received his B.A. and M.D. from Johns Hopkins University.[2] He was involved in the discovery of the role of viruses in the transmission of certain types of cancer. In 1966 he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work.
...
As a pathologist he made his seminal observation, that a malignant tumor (specifically, a sarcoma) growing on a domestic chicken could be transferred to another fowl simply by exposing the healthy bird to a cell-free filtrate, in 1911.[3][4] This finding, that cancer could be transmitted by a virus (now known as the Rous sarcoma virus, a retrovirus), was widely discredited by most of the field's experts at that time. Since he was a relative newcomer, it was several years before anyone even tried to replicate his prescient results. Although clearly some influential researchers were impressed enough to nominate him to the Nobel Committee as early as 1926 (and in many subsequent years, until he finally received the award, 40 years later—this may be a record for the time between a discovery and a Nobel Prize).
- Dan Shechtman: Quasicrystals
Dan Shechtman (born January 24, 1941 in Tel Aviv) is the Philip Tobias Professor of Materials Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, an Associate of the US Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, and Professor of Materials Science at Iowa State University. On April 8, 1982, while on sabbatical at the U.S. National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., Shechtman discovered the icosahedral phase, which opened the new field of quasiperiodic crystals. He was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the discovery of quasicrystals". Shechtman is the fourth Israeli to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in under a decade.
...
From the day Shechtman published his findings on quasicrystals in 1984 to the day Linus Pauling died (1994), Shechtman experienced hostility from him toward the non-periodic interpretation. "For a long time it was me against the world," he said. "I was a subject of ridicule and lectures about the basics of crystallography. The leader of the opposition to my findings was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, the idol of the American Chemical Society and one of the most famous scientists in the world. For years, 'til his last day, he fought against quasi-periodicity in crystals. He was wrong, and after a while, I enjoyed every moment of this scientific battle, knowing that he was wrong."
Linus Pauling is noted saying "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists." Pauling was apparently unaware of a paper in 1981 by H. Kleinert and K. Maki which had pointed out the possibility of a non-periodic Icosahedral Phase in quasicrystals (see the historical notes). The head of Shechtman's research group told him to "go back and read the textbook" and a couple of days later "asked him to leave for 'bringing disgrace' on the team." Shechtman felt rejected. On publication of his paper, other scientists began to confirm and accept empirical findings of the existence of quasicrystals.
- Hans Krebs: The Krebs Cycle, Metabolic Energy Production
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Adolf_Krebs
Sir Hans Adolf Krebs (25 August 1900 – 22 November 1981) was a German-born British physician and biochemist. Krebs is best known for his identification of two important metabolic cycles: the urea cycle and the citric acid cycle. The latter, the key sequence of metabolic chemical reactions that produces energy in cells, is also known as the Krebs cycle and earned him a Nobel Prize in 1953, which he shared with Fritz Lipmann.
Krebs, Hans (ATP energy, Krebs cycle, his work was both ignored and ridiculed for the first ten years)
- Svante Arrhenius: The Properties of Electrolytes are Caused by Charged Atoms
From megafoundation.org:
Svante Arrhenius - Ion Chemistry
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. The value of Arrhenius' work was not well understood because the idea of a connection between electricity and chemical affinity, once advocated by Berzelius, had vanished from the general consciousness of scientists in his university at Uppsalla but attention from a couple of established scientists in Stockholm helped him to get recognition for his work. Arrhenius was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1903.
- Hannes Alfvén: Magnetohydrodynamics
Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén (30 May 1908 – 2 April 1995) was a Swedish electrical engineer, plasma physicist and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD).
...
Alfvén's work was disputed for many years by the senior scientist in space physics, the British mathematician and geophysicist Sydney Chapman. Alfvén's disagreements with Chapman stemmed in large part from trouble with the peer review system. Alfvén rarely benefited from the acceptance generally afforded senior scientists in scientific journals. He once submitted a paper on the theory of magnetic storms and auroras to the American journal Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity only to have his paper rejected on the ground that it did not agree with the theoretical calculations of conventional physics of the time. He was regarded as a person with unorthodox opinions in the field by many physicists, R. H. Stuewer noting that "... he remained an embittered outsider, winning little respect from other scientists even after he received the Nobel Prize..." and was often forced to publish his papers in obscure journals. Alfvén recalled:
When I describe the [plasma phenomena] according to this formulism most referees do not understand what I say and turn down my papers. With the referee system which rules US science today, this means that my papers are rarely accepted by the leading US journals.
- F. Sherwood Rowland, Mario Molina, and Paul Crutzen: Choloroflurocarbons Destroying the Ozone Layer
From megafoundation.org:
They were ridiculed for their work for years before being vindicated by the discovery of a massive hole in the ozone layer over Antarctic. Rowland, along with Mario Molina and Paul Crutzen, won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for their work.
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