31 Longstanding Scientific Theories That Were Later Proven Wrong

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31 Longstanding Scientific Theories That Were Later Proven Wrong
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Most people know that anything defined as a theory contains an essential caveat. This is despite the fact that they’re widely assumed to be true. Sometimes, it’s something fairly obviously true that’s just a real pain in the ass to prove.

Other theories, though, aren’t so lucky. They didn’t end up standing the test of time, like the big bang or evolution. Some only got a decade or so, if they were lucky, before being absolutely demolished. 

Below, Redditors recalled some of the most impressively wrong theories ever to be cooked up, accepted and later shot down.

avantgardengnome . 2y ago The Aristotelian interpretation of gravity was that everything was made of four elements (earth, air, fire, water) and everything wants to return to its core state. So heavy things fall to the ground because they're mostly earth, burning wood separates the air elements (smoke) from the earth elements (charcoal), etc.
Specialist_totembag 2y ago My grandfather died during a surgery to remove ulcers from his stomach. At the time ulcers were believed to be just caused by excess acid in stomach. treatment was just peleative with anti-acids and diet, until you had to remove the ulcers. it was the widespread belief that bacteria cannot survive in the human stomach due the acid. Nowadays he would just taken a oral antibiotic for a week and the ulcers would be gone. penicilin was available at the time, just that the doctors did not believed that ulcers could be caused by bacteria.
muffledvoice 2y ago Edited 2y ago Historian of science here. One interesting example that comes to mind is the phlogiston theory to explain combustion and oxidation. Scientists were baffled by these natural processes, and it was a German chemist named Georg Stahl who proposed that combustible compounds contained a substance called phlogiston that was released when they burned or oxidized. After combustion, for example, the smoky air that resulted was phlogisticated air, later known to be mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide. It was primarily the later work of Antoine Lavoisier that cleared this up.
Stillwater215 . 2y ago The doctor who invented the Lobotomy procedure was awarded the Nobel prize for it. That was a pretty misinformed decision, even at the time.
SnooConfections6085 E 2y ago The racial theories that resulted from the discovery/reconstruction of the Proto-Indo- European language in the 19th century. These theories include the Aryan master race core belief of Naziism.
UEMcGill 2y ago That ulcers were caused by stress. Barry Marshal was convinced they were in part caused by bacterial infection. No one believed him, so he figured out how to culture the suspect bacteria, infected himself, and then cured himself. Не won the Nobel prize.
Didntlikedefaultname . 2y ago That infants cannot feel pain. Up to the 1980s doctors operated on babies without anesthesia
phibby 2y ago I love the idea of Miasma Theory. Before Germ Theory, it was thought contagious diseases spread through their smell. Like the black death spread by the smell of rotting corpses. Also cool to know that those witch doctor masks with the long, bird-beak-nose was filled with herbs and spices at the end. The idea was the smells would prevent the doctors from getting sick.
arrroganteggplant . 2y ago Linus Pauling, a chemist with multiple Nobel prizes, thought enough vitamin С could cure any disease.
doublestitch 2y ago The notion that allergies are psychosomatic. During the 1930s and 1940s psychiatry was a hot field and almost nothing was known about immunology. The idea of psychosomatic ailments was intriguing and several psychiatrists proposed that allergies and asthma were psychosomatic. Physicians responded to childhood asthma and allergies by performing a parentectomy, literally splitting up families and sending children to live in rural group homes. Sometimes a child's health did improve from this intervention. Yet rather than searching for other causes such as mold in the walls of the family's home, the psychiatrists assumed they had rescued those
RunMyLifeReddit . 2y ago Phrenology
Relative-Ad-87 . 2y ago Before Kepler demonstrated that planetary orbits were elliptical, astronomersr had to work with a bizarre theory called epicycles (like a series of loop the loops) to account for irregularities in a circular orbit
ScreenSignificant596 . 2y ago Alpha wolf, even came out to say he was wrong yet the myth won't die , if anyone's curious this Is what a true alpha is https://www.ted.com/talks/frans de waal the S urprising science of alpha males
Pithecanthropus88 . 2y ago Duncan McDougal tried to weigh the soul, rather than try to determine if such a thing as a soul even exists in the first place.
DespiteGreatFaults 2y ago The Luminiferous Ether Theory. It sounds so good, and yet was incredibly wrong. The theory was that if light functions as a wave, there must be a medium for that wave to travel through (i.e., it can't travel through a vacuum). So the medium was a proposed luminiferous ether that we cannot see that only photons interact with. Sounds like dark matter to me, and one can see how it makes logical sense. All wrong.
h2ohow 2y ago In 1895, Lord Kelvin stated that heavier-than- air flying machines are impossible, only to be proved wrong just eight years later.
Warthog_ 2y ago Here are some recent examples (ie 20th century) The Big Bang was once considered on the same level as creationism is today until a Catholic priest named Dr. Georges Lemaître's work on the subject: https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum- collections/cosmic-horizons-book/georges- lemaitre-big-bang. Please note that despite his Catholic background he specifically separated his scientific work from his religious beliefs.
schnit123 2y ago Maternal Impressionism - the belief that birth defects were caused by the woman either being startled by something or having impure thoughts while she was pregnant. One of the most common examples was the belief that a cleft palate (or hare lip) was caused by a pregnant woman either being startled by a rabbit or having gluttonous thoughts about rabbit meat but the stories from the days when this was accepted theory can get wild. My favorite was a case of a white woman who gave birth to a suspiciously dark-skinned child but then managed to convince everyone that
Nightpain9 . 2y ago You use your whole brain. You don't have dormant superpowers just some brain cells don't fire as often.
MathematicianWitty23 2y ago The idea that autism was caused by cold/inattentive mothering.
. 2y ago Well they famously thought that Earth was the centre of the universe or at least the galaxy. Until we find alien life though it kinda feels that way like metaphorically
Thick-Worry5028 . 2y ago Static State Universe. This was the belief that the Universe has always been, will always be and has never changed. Even Einstein supported this idea. This lost to The Big Bang Theory
Minute_Gap_9088 2y ago Lamarck's theory, known as Lamarckism or the theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, proposed that an organism can change during its lifetime in response to its environment, and these changes are passed on to its offspring. According to Lamarck, organisms have an innate drive to become more complex and improve themselves. As they face challenges or demands from their environment, they develop new characteristics or modify existing ones through use or disuse of certain organs. These acquired characteristics are then inherited by the offspring, leading to evolutionary change over time. However, Lamarck's theory was later disproven by
Dr. Benjamin Spock an excellent pediatrician who wrote an excellent book about child care where he recommended placing babies on their stomachs. As it turned out later this greatly increases the risk of Sudden infant death syndrome.
Realistic_Alarm1422 . 2y ago Food pyramid.
twotwo4 . 2y ago Washing hands and germ theory.
Suspicious_Decapod . 2y ago 'Stones can't fall from the sky because there's nothing up there.' Turns out that everything is up there.
Adept-Elephant1948 . 2y ago Galen and his many medical theories, chief among them was that blood was burned up like firewood in the kidneys, and that blood originated from there. Also the whole balancing the humurs, led to leeching and bloodletting being common practice for hundreds of years. Leeching is useful in some circumstances, not when you have a slight sniffle though.
OJimmy . 2y ago Aristotle or Plato argued that Feces would transform into rats.
This-Perspective-865 . 2y ago Pelvic massages to cure hysteria in women. They were finger banging women as medicine. More recently, medical students were being taught that Black patients feel less pain.
Evatog 2y ago Psychologists used to have you punch pillows and stuff to get the anger out It was a very common practice for decades. Until the science started rolling in. Turns out having people relieve stress through violence, even VS an inanimate object, just reinforces using violence to settle your mental issues. So for decades these quacks were working with people with violence issues that were genuinely trying to get help, and instead were being actively made worse by psychology.

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