Science leads us to some very counterintuitive concepts such as the earth orbiting around the sun, humans and other multicellular life originating from one-celled organisms, light occurring as both particle and wave, the universe originating from nothing, and many others that seem to not fit with "common sense." However, these ideas, odd to us as they may be, seem to be true. Unfortunately some "scientific" ideas are not so supportable; that is they are either untestable or are frauds, deliberate or delusional. I will deal here with some biological science misadventures, since I am a biologist.
One idea that was easily disposed of was discussed by Stephen Jay Gould. Walter H. Gaskell (!847-1914) was a highly respected English physiologist, but from about 1888 on he devoted his life to promoting the hypothesis of the evolution of vertebrates from arthropods, based on the view that arthropods "turned turtle" from a ventral to a dorsal nerve chord. Actually it was even worse than that because he accounted for the hollow dorsal nerve cord, not as derived from a ventral solid nerve cord, but from the arthropod gut. He never gave up this totally falsified idea (See: Gould, 1998).
Another idea that was promulgated by various writers in the Nineteenth Century was the view that human kind was actually several "species." One of the major promulgators of this idea, called polygenism, was none other than the founder of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, Louis Agassiz. Modern genetical studies show that not only are we one species (even Cuvier, who lacked the genetic evidence, was aware of this), but that all humans in the world are more closely related than would be allowed for distinct races and have as much or more variation within discrete populations as between so-called races. Still some "racial" markers are useful in medical research, but for little else.
One recent "theory," if one can even give it that name, is the view that larvae originated from the mixing of genetic materials of quite dissimilar organisms. Unfortunately because of certain influences this questionable idea was published by a reputable scientific journal and is also in a book by a major scientific press! The promulgator of this rather strange idea was Donald Irving Williamson, a retired British planktonologist and carcinologist. Lynn Margulis championed Williamson's right to publish and used her position as a member of the National Academy of Sciences to place it in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America without further peer review (the Academy has now dropped the policy of allowing this, but claim that this incident had nothing to do with the change.) Margulis claimed that the idea should be published to allow the scientific community to evaluate it and that Williamson had followed proper scientific methods. Many criticized the article and the earlier book "The Origin of Larvae," published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. Several published criticisms in the same Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, including a letter by Gonzalo Giribet, a curator at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. As Giribet pointed out genetic studies show no close relatedness of such organisms as Peripatus and the caterpillars of butterflies and the concept was already disproven (falsified) by this empirical evidence. There is no research program possible.
I was shocked to find that Margulis (with whom I had talked at a Invertebrates in Captivity meeting in Arizona) had been involved with this unsupported idea that had never been replicated as nearly as I could tell. Also I have a slight connection with Gonzalo Giribet and respect his opinion. But when I first came across Williamson's book I did not know what to think. Kluwer Academic Press is a leading scientific publisher. I thus took the book seriously and tried to read it. I really lost the whole thread early on, however, since the book is very dense and rarely cites anyone except the author.
Margulis was better than this, but I recently read that she had also disputed the HIV virus as the cause of AIDS and that she was into 9/11 conspiracy theories before she died in 2011. She obviously had some serious problems toward the end and I am saddened to hear of them. She was a remarkable scientist and contributed greatly to our understanding of phylogeny of living things.
Sometimes people lose it, but the best that can be said of the Williamson incident is that it caused more discussion of how larvae did really originate. I hope that this leads to something more backed up by evidence than the hybridogenesis theory.
I have not listed Williamson's publications, but those who are interested can find the references in some of the works and websites listed below.
Literature References:
Cuvier, Baron Geoges. 1863. The Animal Kingdom Arranged According to its Organization. Henry G. Bohn, London. (Reprinted in 1969 by Kraus Reprint Co., New York.)
Giribet, G. 2009. On velvet worms and caterpillars: Science, fiction, or science fiction? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (47). http://www.pnas.org/...
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1998. Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms. Harmony Books, New York.
Hart, M., and R. Grosberg. 2009. Caterpillars did not evolve from onychophorans by hybridogenesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (47) http://www.pnas.org/...
Internet References
Bamshad, Michael J., and Steve E. Olson. 2003. Does Race Exist? Scientific American. http://www.brandeis.edu/...
Boll, Piter Kehoma. 2012. Why everybody laughs at Williamson, Lynn Margulis’ “best friend.”
http://earthlingnature.wordpress.com/...
Fitzpatrick, Tony. 1998. Biological Differences among Races do Not Exist, WU Research Shows. http://wupa.wustl.edu/...
Lynn Margulus http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Race - History -One Race or several species? http://www.understandingrace.org/...