Many false ideas were believed for centuries, even by experts and scientists. A growing list.
Richard Thaler is collecting a list of long held scientific beliefs that are currently considered to be false. Eminent scientists and scholars from around the world have contributed their favorites.
GEOFFREY CARR Science Editor, The Economist Believing that people believed the Earth was flat is a good example of a modern myth about ancient scientific belief. Educated people have known it was spherical (and also how big it was) since the time of Eratosthenes. That is pretty close to the beginning of any system of thought that could reasonably merit being called scientific.
GREGORY COCHRAN Consultant, Adaptive Optics; Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, University of Utah; Coauthor, The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution One favorite is helicobacter pylori as the main cause of stomach ulcers. This was repeatedly discovered and then ignored and forgotten: doctors preferred 'stress' as the the cause, not least because it was undefinable. Medicine is particularly prone to such shared mistakes. I would say this is the case because human biology is complex, experiments are not always permitted, and MDs are not trained to be puzzle-solvers — instead, to follow authority.
DAVID DEUTSCH Quantum Physicist, Oxford; Author, The Fabric of Reality Surely the most extreme example is the existence of a force of gravity. It's hard to say when this belief began but it surely predates Newton. It must have existed from the time when concepts such as force were first formulated until the general theory of relativity superseded it in 1915.
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