Let’s take a moment to talk about the people who were seen as “heretics” but were actually ahead of their time. Their ideas were called wrong then but ended up being right! Dive into their stories (as discussed on Reddit) and find out how history proved them correct:
13. Alan Turing
“It crushes my soul just thinking about how much he changed computer science and computation only to have such a horrible end of life. Without him WW2 would have lasted far longer and cost so many more lives.”
“His story hurts to read about. He saved millions of lives only to be chemically castrated for sleeping with another dude. It’s disgusting how he was treated.”
12. Kotaku Wamura
“Mayor of a town in Japan who spent decades of taxpayer money developing a seawall to defend against tsunamis. During his whole career he was ridiculed for the expenditure and he died before it ever payed off. Then in 2011 it saved the whole town.”
11. Paul Kimmage and Greg LeMond
“Called Lance Armstrong out as the PED-using cheating scum that he was and got vilified and castigated for it. Turned out to be completely right.
“And Greg LeMond. Fortunately for Greg, his reputation has come back since Lance was exposed.”
10. Patricia Stallings
“Convicted of poisoning her first child, gave birth in prison (kid got taken away) and the kid also dies. Instead of poisoning it was now found it was a genetic defect that had similar effects as poisoning with antifreeze.”
9. Sinead O’Connor
“Was hoping someone would say this. She had a lot of personal issues. But when it came to attacking the Catholic Church for decades of systematic abuse, she was spot on. Her career was ruined because of her stance. But in the end, she turned out to be right.”
“Absolutely. She was so on the right side on history.”
“She was literally booed off stage by thousands of people at Madison Square Garden the week following SNL. NBC banned her from their TV network for life. She was absolutely vilified by the general public, the media, and the music industry. I don’t know why you’re trying to downplay what happened to her.”
8. Richard Jewell
“Richard Jewell was blasted as being the Atlanta Olympic Bomber when he was really just a guy helping people out down there. He deserved better.”
“Poor guy died young too, he was only 44 years old. Natural causes.”
“I remember that guy. The media had him as guilty right away. They showed no mercy, and frankly, no integrity.”
7. John Yudkin
“John Yudkin was a food scientist who tried hard to push the idea that sugar caused heart disease and obesity amongst other conditions. He suggested a low carb diet for weight loss in 1958. The sugar industry paid scientists like Ansel Keys and D. Mark Hegsted to downplay this connection and suggest that dietary fat caused obesity and heart disease. Massive lobbying helped pro sugar scientists to become advisors to government and officially suggest a low fat diet to prevent heart disease. Taking fat out of food makes it taste bad, so what do they add? More sugar, causing the food to be unhealthier. The demonising of fat lasted well into the 2000’s and often still persists to this day.”
6. Alfred Wegener
“The guy who came up with the theory of Pangaea and continental drift.”
“Not only that, we now have theories that Pangea was only one of the many supercontinents that have existed throughout the eons: Nuna, Rodinia, Pannotia…”
Writer’s note for context: Wegener was ridiculed when he first presented his theory of continental drift. However, his ideas eventually led to our current understanding of plate tectonics. Sadly, Wegener died aged 50 on an expedition in Greenland – before he could enjoy his vindication.
5. Clair Patterson
“In addition to being an accomplished scientist, he was attacked for decades due to his controversial view that lead in gasoline was harmful. He was eventually vindicated, and his contributions to removing lead from gasoline may place him among the most important people for human health in modern times. The Bill Nye reboot had a great segment on him.”
4. Barry Marshall and Robin Warren
“For ever, the cause of peptic ulcers was believed to be stress, spicy food and too much acid production. They believed it was actually of bacterial origin. No-one believed them, they were ridiculed because the belief was that bacteria couldn’t survive in the acidic environment of the stomach. [That didn’t change] until Barry took a cocktail of H. pylori bacteria, which caused him to have massive inflammation of the stomach which was found to be colonized with the bacteria, but a course of antibiotics later and it was gone. One Nobel prize later and now the treatment of peptic ulcers is turned on its head and instead of months or years of discomfort it can often be sorted with a week or two course of anti-biotics.”
3. Nan Briton
“Nan Briton had an affair with US president Warren G. Harding in the early 1920s. Harding died of a heart attack in 1923, and Briton tried to sue for child support. She was ridiculed in court. In 2015, Ancestry.com did a DNA analysis on Harding’s and Briton’s descendants. Nan was telling the truth.”
2. Ignaz Semmelweis
“The world didn’t know about germs yet, but he saw that way less women were dying from childbirth when midwives attended the births than when doctors did (doctors were coming from autopsies [and so on]). Ignaz suggested they start washing their hands, and people lost their f****** minds. Doctors ridiculed him and everyone hated him. He had a “nervous breakdown,” was committed to an insane asylum, beaten by the guards, and died from a gangrenous wound as a result of the beating.”
1. Linda Chamberlain
“The ‘A Dingo Killed My Baby’ lady. She was vilified, mocked and ridiculed across the world. She then spent three years in prison, before it turned out she was actually telling the truth the whole time, and a dingo did, in fact kill her baby.”
“I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to lose your baby in a tragic accident and then get mocked and even jailed for it.”
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Source: Reddit.