mrissa | It's okay if your top ten all relate to Tesla.

timprov asked this on his journal, but I have a different friendslist and I'm curious, so I'm asking again:

What's your favorite scientific theory that turned out to be ridiculously counterfactual? (e.g. Lamarckism, Lysenkoism, Galvanism.)

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From:

panjianlien.livejournal.com

Hymens prove virginity.

That one was so good I got 30% of a book out of it.

From:

landofnowhere

Kelvin's theory that atoms are knotted vortices of ether.

From:

mrissa.livejournal.com

Ether makes everything hilarious. I have said this for years.

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From:

delta-november.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 11:40 am (UTC) - Expand

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profrobert.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 09:47 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

themagdalen.livejournal.com

I was going to say ether!

Okay, phlogiston.

Edited Date: 2009-09-03 02:23 am (UTC)

From:

mrissa.livejournal.com

If my favorite color is blue, your favorite color can also be blue. Crackpot theories: same deal.

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brooksmoses - Date: 2009-09-03 02:53 am (UTC) - Expand

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tiger-spot.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 04:05 am (UTC) - Expand

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oursin.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 07:30 am (UTC) - Expand

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swan-tower.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 07:39 am (UTC) - Expand

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desperance.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 06:27 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

brooksmoses

I'm rather fond of phlogiston theory. Especially the antigravity parts of it.

Also, though it was really more of an engineering theory than a scientific one, the theory that sustained fusion reactions would be easy to control and use for power generation.

From:

jebbypal

DNA -> RNA -> protein.
Still not comfortable with the whole prion thing, but its here to stay.

From:

mrissa.livejournal.com

"In time your neurons may crumble--cognition may tumble--just like they're made of clay. But! Prions are here to stay...."

Now I'm going to be bastardizing that poor song for the rest of the evening.

From:

sartorias.livejournal.com

Phrenology--remarkably for how long it persisted.

From:

callunav.livejournal.com

And then there's retro-phrenology...

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matociquala.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 10:49 am (UTC) - Expand

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mrissa.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 01:04 pm (UTC) - Expand

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mrissa.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 01:24 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

zwol.livejournal.com

I've got to go with the hollow earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_earth). Seriously put forward by Edmund Halley, completely 100% wrong, and still a popular fixation of crackpots -- beat that!

From:

dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com

I still use this one when arguing with my mother, who keeps insisting that the world is flat (and to my terror, I am not sure she is joking).

So I simply sigh in exasperation and say "But Mother, the earth cannot be flat, because if it was flat all the continents and the second sun inside wouldn't fit. QED."

From:

nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com

Do "ancient astronauts" count, or is that more fake anthropology?

From:

reveritas.livejournal.com

Ectoplasm!

From:

ellarien

And another vote for phlogiston.

From:

columbina.livejournal.com

Spontaneous generation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation)

Because it amuses me to think of a relationship between geese and barnacles.

Because it seems so ridiculous now, but if you were, say, Aristotle, the logical chain leading to it made good sense. Trees form from seeds, why shouldn't eels form from earthworms?

And because without it we wouldn't have "Or All The Seas With Oysters," one of my favorite stories.

From:

columbina.livejournal.com

Also, I shall have to type it in by hand, I think, so I can't do it right now, but one day I shall pass along to you the story of the Darwinian terrorists and the Lamarckian puppies.

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mrissa.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 03:06 am (UTC) - Expand

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columbina.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 03:49 pm (UTC) - Expand

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swan-tower.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 07:40 am (UTC) - Expand

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columbina.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 02:23 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

ckd

I still say phlogiston, because it's still fun to say.

From:

dherblay.livejournal.com

Epicycles.

From:

madmanatw.livejournal.com

Ooh, that's a good one I hadn't thought of. I was going, however, to say that for me it's a general tie between phlogiston and the aforementioned Lamarckism.

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From:

hypatia-j.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-04 01:30 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

rosefox

Bodily humours!

From:

mirrorthaw.livejournal.com

Ether is a good one. So is J. J. Thomson's plum pudding model of the atom. Also, Descartes' screw-shaped vortexes to explain magnetism.

From:

kizmet-42.livejournal.com

Alchemy. What's not to love? Eternal life and plenty of gold to spend on it.

From:

tiger-spot.livejournal.com

Phlogiston, because it's so perfectly backwards. Also it is an awesome-sounding word.

From:

songwind.livejournal.com

Honestly, it never really occurred to me to have a favorite, but now that I think about it, I have a small handful of favorites.

1)Phlogiston
2)Geocentrism
3)The one whose name I can't remember, about how all natural laws were known and so all facts could be deduced without the need for direct observation.

There are others for which the word "favorite" would be inappropriate, but which I like to keep around as evidence of man's arrogance and/or stupidity.

Edited Date: 2009-09-03 04:20 am (UTC)

From:

mrissa.livejournal.com

3) Do you mean determinism or something different?

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songwind.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 01:16 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

callunav.livejournal.com

I can't think about Lamarckism, because every time I do, I remember the agony of sitting in a class on childhood and adolescent trauma listening to the TA give a lecture on research being done on hereditary PTSD. I sat on my hands and tried - successfully, though I don't know if I would have held out much longer - not to put my hand up in the air to protest that this was Purest Lamarckian Bullshit.

...and now, having remembered that, I can't think of one I /do/ like - except for some things I'm dubious about which have yet to be disproven.

From:

markgritter.livejournal.com

I am shocked that nobody has yet mentioned "Female hysteria".

From:

songwind.livejournal.com

We're all too scary to look pervy in front of Marissa.

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mrissa.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 01:24 pm (UTC) - Expand

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mrissa.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-09-03 01:36 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

dichroic.livejournal.com

Martian canals.

From:

iraunink.livejournal.com

I don't know what do call it - the belief that a woman was responsible for the sex of the child even when sperm was clearly tiny babies.

From:

elsmi.livejournal.com

I really like the Tychonic system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tychonic_system), because it is... actually not... wrong. Just... wrong-headed.

Perhaps also the Hilbert program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_program), a noble tragedy of operatic scope. (Maths opera is the next big publishing trend. Tell your friends!)

From:

dhole.livejournal.com

Panspermia!

From:

barondave.livejournal.com

Phlogistan is fun (for certain values of "fun").

Tension causing heartburn. Heh, what a kneeslapper. That one fooled people for millennia.

But I'll go with Velikovsky. Hey, I want Venus and Mars zipping around the solar system, providing stories for the uninformed to base religions on.

From:

dancing-crow.livejournal.com

I think there are some current, non-Velikovsky theories regarding the development of the solar system that still have the planets migrating in fairly hair-raising ways. But nothing on par with himself.