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Examining science on the fringes: vital, but generally wrong

// November 9th, 2009 // Tech News

The history of science is replete with examples, from plate tectonics to prions, of heretical ideas that received a poor reception from the scientific establishment when they were first proposed. The apparent resistance to new ideas has earned scientists a fair bit of criticism. But some recent publications have indicated both that it is possible for fringe ideas to get a hearing from mainstream science, and that their proponents may end up wishing they didn’t. Fringe ideas that go against mainstream scientific thought are effectively a constant in most areas of science, and there are a number of examples where the ideas have moved from the fringes to the mainstream. The classic example here is Alfred Wegener , who is celebrated for his development of the ideas we now know as plate tectonics, a phenomenally successful scientific theory. At the time, however, his ideas were ridiculed. “Reaction to Wegener’s theory was almost uniformly hostile, and often exceptionally harsh and scathing,” as the Berkeley site notes.