There was a doctor who argued for 20 years that ulcers were caused by bacteria and should be treated with antibiotics. He was called a quack and worse. Now we find out he was right.
He had peer review to fight. That was the problem.
You don’t dare rock the boat and go against consensus. After all, they know better, dontcha see? It’s settled science and we all know that science is the final word on everything.
“There was a doctor who argued for 20 years that ulcers were caused by bacteria and should be treated with antibiotics. He was called a quack and worse. Now we find out he was right.”
—More like 3 years. Marshall and Warren cultured the bacteria Helicobacter pylori and published a paper in 1983 - it was not widely accepted, and so Marshall famously gave himself gastritis by drinking a petri-dish of the bacteria in 1984 (he did not develop an ulcer, however, as it is commonly claimed). In 1985 this experiment was published in a journal and the link between ulcers and H. pylori was finally widely accepted.
INDEED.
###
There was a doctor who argued for 20 years that ulcers were caused by bacteria and should be treated with antibiotics. He was called a quack and worse. Now we find out he was right.