Has there ever been anything originally dismissed as pseudoscience that was later proven to be legit?
Has there ever been anything originally dismissed as pseudoscience that was later proven to be legit?
There is a tendency for real doctors with backing from Academia or whoever's in charge of deciding how you science to just plain getting it wrong and not realizing it for a long time.
Homeopathy is a good example of this, as it appeared to get great results when it was created during the Bubonic Plague and had such staying power to the point that in the 1800's it was considered a legitimate and mainstream field of medical practice.
Now today we know Homeopathy is nonsense... Remembers New Age Healing is still a thing Okay, those of us with sense know homeopathy is garbage. With the only reason it was getting such wonderful results was because the state of medicine for a long period of time in human history was so god awful that not getting any treatment at all was actually the smarter idea. Since Homeopathy is basically just "No medicine at all", that's exactly what was happening with its success.
Incidentally this is also why the Christian Science movement (Which was neither Christian nor Science) had so many people behind it, people were genuinely living longer from it because it required people to stop smoking at a time when no one knew smoking killed you.
Anyhow. With that in mind, I want to know if there's a case where the exact opposite happened.
Where Scientists got together on a subject, said "Wow, only an idiot would believe this. This clearly does not work, can not work, and is totally impossible."
Only for someone to turn around, throw down research proving that there was no pseudo in this proposed pseudoscience with their finest "Ya know I had to do it 'em" face.
The closest I can think of is how people believed that Germ Theory, the idea that tiny invisible creatures were making us all sick, were the ramblings of a mad man. But that was more a refusal to look at evidence, not having evidence that said "No" that was replaced by better evidence that said "Disregard that, the answer is actually Yes"
Can anyone who sciences for a living instead of merely reading science articles as a hobby and understanding basically only a quarter of them at best tell me if something like that has happened?
Thank you, have a nice day.
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Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) was originally dismissed by a lot of community doctors as well as more academic medical people. There are still a few who don’t believe in it and dismiss it as a behavioural or attitude problem. Thankfully those people are in the minority now. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean they’re not in influential positions.
One surprising contributor to validating ME/CFS is long covid, which seems to be the same condition but catalysed by a different virus.
I’m not a medical expert and could have mistakes in the above post but it’s generally correct.
I hate to be so selfish, but as someone with ME, the research that has accompanied Long Covid has been a real blessing. Prior to Long Covid, so little was being done and few people took ME/CFS seriously.
I struggle with this one, because I think a lot of it comes down to the stigma around mental illness not being treated as real illness. Bear with me.
Hypothetically, if ME was a behavioural issue (i.e. a mental illness) and was treated properly, the person would get better and they'd be happy with the diagnosis as it led to a treatment with stopped their suffering. However, because mental illness is treated so poorly, people want it to be a "real" illness so it gets taken seriously and they can get help.
The medical community has basically been in a battle with their patients on the definition of the syndrome. "Chronic fatigue syndrome" was deemed dismissive, they relabed it "myalgic encephalomyelitis" - big words to mean "spinal/nervous-system issue with muscle soreness". Honestly, I think the best name is "post-viral fatigue syndrome" which does at least point to a triggering condition.
We still know nothing about why it happens, or how to treat anything except the symptoms. It may very well still be a psychological condition of some kind AND THAT'S OK! The important thing is finding a good treatment and helping people. That will be best done if we follow the evidence rather than letting social dynamics dictate what is acceptable to investigate.
I prefer the term post-viral fatigue too. However it’s incorrect to say that we don’t know if it’s a psychological or behavioural issue. GET and CBT have been thoroughly rubbished as interventions. Not only are they ineffective but they are dangerous.
I get to hear the leading experts* once per year talk about this and they have absolutely honed in on immune response and mitochondrial dysfunction as most probable causes. They are at the stage of proposing diagnostic criteria now. Things could get worse before they get better but we can confidently say that this is a medical condition now.
- I’m thinking of Dr. William Weir and Dr. Nigel Speight, among others.