10 Dumb Scientific Theories People Once Believed
People who believed in these ones really should've known better.
Published 6 months ago in Facepalm
Science is always changing, with theorems being debunked and superseded by new ideas almost constantly. The beliefs we hold today won’t necessarily be the ones we hold a hundred years from now. People tend to believe the scientific theories of their time. But people from history who believed in these really should have known better.
The scientists who came up with these ideas were throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck. Much of the ‘research’ done to support these theories included having dreams, coming up with stuff at random, and starting sentences with “Wouldn’t it be cool if…”
Check out these seriously stupid scientific theories from times past. Maybe one day people will be reading a list like this about some of the stuff we believe in nowadays.
1
Spontaneous Generation
Spontaneous generation was a theory dating back at least to the time of Aristotle. People believed that living things were created from objects or conditions in the world. For example, mud and sweat turned into mice, cow flesh turned into bees, and even barnacles gave birth to geese. I guess it’s as good a theory as any if you don’t know how animals reproduce, but some of the specifics are pretty wild.
2
Hollow Earth
Astronomer Edmond Halley, best known for being the namesake of Halley’s Comet, proposed in 1692 the idea that the Earth was a hollow sphere within an empty space inside that possibly contained another atmosphere, and life. Many people looked into this claim, including the Germans during World War II. The Earth being hollow would be one thing– but a whole separate world inside? That’s a little much.
3
World Ice Doctrine
World Ice Doctrine was a theory created by Austrian engineer Hanns Hörbiger in 1894 after he had a prophetic dream of himself floating in space. Based on the white, somewhat icy-looking appearance of the Moon, Hörbiger theorized that ice was the fundamental building block of the universe, with all celestial bodies being made of ice. This was another favorite theory of Germans during World War II. I guess it makes more sense than the moon being cheese, but not by much.
4
Milk Transfusions
Before doctors knew about blood types, blood transfusions were very risky. So in the 1850s, some doctors decided to do something much less risky: inject cow’s milk into people’s veins. They believed the milk would transform and become white blood cells, because it was white. This procedure, as you can imagine, did not have good results.
5
Phrenology
Phrenology was the study of the human skull. Not a normal scientific study like we have nowadays, but the idea that you could determine a person’s traits and proclivities just based on the bumps on their skull. Aside from being completely unsupported, it was also deeply racist and socially problematic. This was the 1800s after all.
6
Lead into Gold
Medieval alchemists believed it was possible to use a ‘philosopher's stone’ to transform metals of lesser value into much-sought-after gold. This theory was labeled as science despite basically being magic. There was never any real record of somebody performing this transmutation of course. However, just this year physicists at CERN manage to transform lead into gold at the elementary level just for a fleeting moment, so maybe those medieval people weren’t so dumb after all.
7
Dr Henry Cotton
Dr Henry Cotton was the medical director of the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton from 1907 to 1930. He believed that mental illness was caused by infections in the teeth, so he treated mentally ill patients by removing all their teeth. If that didn’t help, he would assume that the infection had spread to other organs and so would begin to remove them from his patients. It seems to me like Dr. Cotton may have been more mentally ill than the patients he was treating.
8
Miasma theory of disease
Before we knew what germs were, the consensus in Victorian times and before was that disease was caused by miasma, or ‘bad air’. This could be air that wafted from vile things like animal corpses, remote mountains, or graveyards. It’s one of those theories that seems pretty supernatural but isn’t all too far off from the truth– a lot of that stuff will make you sick, but not because of magical air.
10
Vegetable Lamb
From the Ancient Greeks to 14th century Europeans, multiple cultures throughout history have believed in the Vegetable Lamb, the idea that there existed a tree in India that could grow living sheep on its branches. Despite people being well-acquainted with how sheep actually reproduced, botanists debated the existence of the Vegetable Lamb well into the 1700s.
Most Popular
