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A lot of things that we take for granted were not really received with open arms when they were suggested. Even worse, many scientists, inventors, or thinkers, whom we now revere as visionaries, were actually mocked, discredited, and even punished just for their ideas.
So one netizen wanted to hear about historical figures that were unfairly vilified, only to be vindicated later. From being imprisoned for suggesting that doctors wash their hands, to excommunication over saying the Earth actually orbits the Sun, here are the most interesting examples gathered by the internet.
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#1
Ignaz Semmelweis. The world didn’t know about germs yet, but he saw that way fewer women were dying from childbirth when midwives attended the births than when doctors did (doctors were coming from autopsies and wrecking women’s s**t). Ignaz suggested they start washing their hands, and people lost their f*****g 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.
glamourcrow:
He didn't discover it, he was told by midwives over and over and over until he looked into it.
Midwives at the hospital observed that when doctors delivered babies, mothers were at a higher risk. Any housewife knew that food would spoil faster if handled with dirty hands and they always used vinegar solutions to clean their hands, tools, and surfaces. Any housewife would do this and midwives did it because mothers and their babies are more important than pumpkin preserves. Only doctors never washed their grubby hands while it was a deeply ingrained habit in most midwives.
Semmelweis listened to women. No wonder they locked him away.
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#2
Sinéad O'Connor. Was villified when she ripped up a picture of the Pope on SNL for child abuse and criticizing the Catholic Church.
Over the following decades we realized how devastatingly right she was about the whole thing.
Craig Staley 1 year ago
To be fair, she didn't explain her reasoning until much later. When she did it, all she said was "Fight the real enemy." And her history of being abused as a child wasn't known in America, and the child abuse scandals within the Church hadn't come to light yet. In retrospect, it makes sense as a protest, but at the time it was completely out of the blue.
#3
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.
Mimi La Souris 1 year ago
because Japan has never experienced tsunamis ! I’m being ironic, but it’s like you’re telling me that someone in Los Angeles is being mocked for worrying about earthquakes
While more contemporary thinkers and scientists might face a bit of ridicule for novel ideas, the scientific minds of the past risked a lot worse. Both Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei were threatened by the Catholic church for daring to suggest that, in fact, the Earth was not the center of the universe. Now they have both been completely vindicated by the scientific community.
Ironically, this “I told you so” story is perhaps the reason why we still know them today. As you can imagine, there were not really that many astronomers in 15th-century Europe. Both Galileo and Copernicus were brought back into more mainstream discussions by 19th-century Protestant writers, who used their stories as examples of the suppressive nature of the Catholic church.
#4
Marie Tharp, who drew a map that would help validate the theory of plate tectonics in 1953. Her colleague dismissed it as “girl talk” for over a year. But when the evidence seemed to point to the map being correct, he published the map under his own name and Tharp’s contribution was ignored by both Columbia University (where she worked) and the greater geological community.
#5
Dominique Moceanu - Dominque came forward in 2008 revealing abuse in USA gymnastics before the 2016 sexual abuse scandal. She was accused of being bitter, lying, and seeking attention. She was blacklisted by gymnastics coaches and received threatening e-mails accusing her of basically being a traitor. John Geddert was one of the USA National Team coaches who sent her the following e-mail in 2008: "Dom, Although I am waiting to see the final product, initial quotes and coverage from your Brian Gumble interview have me wondering how you can stab this sport in the back..."John Geddert would later commit s*icide following federal charges of child exploitation and child trafficking of his former gymnasts.
#6
Jimmy Carter. He was right about promoting energy independence and transitioning from usage away from fossil fuels to cleaner forms of energy (and he was a former nuclear engineer as well). His stance back in the '70s holds up extremely well, especially in this day and age.
CatWoman1014 1 year ago
Imagine had we listened to him then. Like seriously this is a moment where we should use time travel
More tragically, it was not until the 19th century that people started to realize just how much disease and infections are carried by dirty hands. Joseph Lister, a British surgeon was the first to recommend that doctors do the bare minimum of hygiene, like washing their hands and maybe wearing gloves when interacting with a corpse. His critics mocked his ideas and “The Lancet,” the leading medical journal of the time, even issued warnings against his ideas.
#7
Stella Liebeck - The woman who sued McDonald's after being burned by hot coffee. Was vilified as the poster child for frivolous lawsuits. After she died pictures of her burns were published and they are graphic.
#8
Alan Turing, the British mathematician and computer scientist was persecuted and prosecuted for his homosexuality, which was considered illegal at the time. Turing's work in breaking the Enigma code during World War II was pivotal in Allied victory. He is now celebrated for his contributions to computing and artificial intelligence.
Pittsburgh rare 1 year ago
He was chemically castrated, committed suicide a year later, and he wasn't granted pardon until 2013. Let's not forget the little details. One might also want to look until what year homosexuality was prosecuted in the UK.
#9
Patricia Stallings comes to mind.
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.
We should all, collectively, thank a number of other medical thinkers of the time who went against the grain and decided to give Joseph Lister’s ideas a shot. Marcus Beck, a consultant surgeon at University College Hospital, made sure to include his ideas in newer editions of medical textbooks.
#10
Stanislav Petrov. More people need to know his name, he literally, like quite literally saved the world.
Saved the world from nuclear ruin, simply because he was stubborn and refused to believe the computing error. He went against his position orders, and was consequently sacked by the USSR and lived an isolated life. Not necessarily vilified by all, but vilified by the USSR and ignored by the west. Put some respect on his name.
And he didn't even win a Nobel peace prize, died in 2017. Recommend watching 'Stanislav Petrov, the man who saved the world'.
#11
Monica Lewinsky. She was a 20-y-o White House intern who got taken advantage of. Then the media crucified her for it.
Pamela24 1 year ago
Yes. No one is saying she did everything right. Not even her. She made some very dumb choices. But who hasn't when they were in their early 20s? Picture the stupidest thing you did at that age. Imagine the entire world hearing about it, being made fun of by everyone, your name becoming a synonym with that mistake and it having an effect on literally every day after that. I honestly don't understand how she even managed to survive and I admire the work she's done since and her sense of humour so much. Also - Linda Tripp deserves to rot in hell.
#12
Courtney Love. I’m referring specifically to the fact that she called out Harvey Weinstein publicly long before what we know now, and everyone kind of just dismissed her.
Ross “Sarcastic Dad” 1 year ago
She was right, but when you act like a lunatic 95% of the time, it's hard to know when to take you seriously the 5% of the time. And for the record, she had a lot of trauma and I understand why she was the way she was.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that a surgeon with clean hands will leave more patients alive. So if you ever think about how romantic it would be to travel to the past, just remember, your doctor would have probably handled a corpse, stitched a wound, eaten lunch, delivered a baby, and who knows what else, before they get around to assisting you.
#13
Dixie Chicks. They were against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and publicly said so. They were effectively cancelled by the right as a result. Turns out they were correct, there were no weapons of mass destruction. The invasion was concocted so Bush could be seen as striking back for 9/11, which won him re-election in 2004.
#14
Doctor Clair Cameron Patterson not only discovered the true age of the Earth with his research in Lead-dating, but during this process he accidentally discovered the dangers of lead contamination. Then he went “wait, we’re putting this s**t in gasoline, cans, paint, etc.” He then began campaigning against lead in everyday products. In particular, he targeted the gasoline industry. *You can imagine how that went in the courtroom*. He was vilified, excluded, and slandered against but kept pushing for lead to be removed from gasoline. Took decades, but obviously lead was removed from gasoline almost entirely by 1990
Kathryn Baylis 1 year ago (edited)
What pisses me off is that, being born in 1960, I was breathing lead-laced air for 30 years before leaded gas went off the market. My mother had breathed it for 70 years at the point. That means I, as well as anyone who was born before 1990—and babies born to anyone born before then—-have traces of lead in my lungs, not just from air I breathed directly, but from the air my mother breathed while I was in her womb. A heavy metal forced on me from even before I took my very first independent breath, totally without my consent. Even worse, it’s not the only harmful substance that has been put in us without our consent. Hell, without our even being made aware of it. Now we have traces of goddamned plastics in us. FFS. We should ALL be extremely pissed off about this, and be doing something, anything—-everything—-to end production of such materials, and prosecute those responsible for continuing to produce them after being made aware of the risks, to get this non-consensual abuse to stop. You’d do it if someone was feeding you poison-laced food every day. Well, a load of companies are poisoning ALL of us everyday on a massive scale. They should be punished as well.
Unfortunately, most of the examples here never got to experience vindication and would probably be surprised by just how important their work really was. Stephen Hawking, in “A Brief History of Time,” wrote that Galileo Galilei could be considered one of the most important contributors to modern science of all time. So if you want to commemorate other great minds that were ignored in their time, check out Bored Panda’s other article on “crazy” people who ended up being right all along.
#16
Lindy Chamberlain
The 'A Dingo Killed My Baby' lady.
She was vilifed, 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.
Isabella 1 year ago (edited)
MargyB did not deserved all the downvotes, I think she was referring to the episode from Seinfeld when Elaine, who was at a party, is saying to a lady who was keep looking for her "baby" (who was her fiancee) , "A dingo eat your baby". Despite the sad story behind this, Elaine's reaction was hilarious.
#17
Barry Marshall (and also Robin Warren his co-researcher). Forever, 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. Not 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.
#18
Pearl Jam war with Ticket master.
In 1994, American rock band Pearl Jam filed a complaint with the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice, claiming that Ticketmaster has a "virtually absolute monopoly on the distribution of tickets to concerts" and attempted to book its tour only at venues that did not use Ticketmaster. However, no action was taken on Ticketmaster.
#19
The Deep-sea exploration community warning OceanGate against ocean tourism. OceanGate basically told them to mind their business.
#20
John Snow. He tried to remove the handle of a water pump in London that was drawing its water downstream from a sewage pipe People who drew water from the pump caught cholera.
#21
Charles Darwin. There’s a whole book on how scared he was to publish his work because he knew he’d be hated for it. The Reluctant Mr. Darwin by David Quammen.
#22
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.
DC 1 year ago
The demonising of carbohydrates isn't really better. The length of the chain molecules has a major effect on the speed of absorption, and therefore, not all carbohydrates, even not all sugars, are the same. Just like fats. Some counter inflammations, some push them. The same? In regard to nutritious energy, for sure. For any else? No.
#23
George Carlin. People used to think he was a hippy spouting off idealistic governmental propaganda. The man was a prophet.
Kelly Scott 1 year ago
George Carlin saw through all the BS our politicians and society lay on us and he wasn't afraid to call it out. He was the kid who said the emperor had no clothes on and he was right on with all his assessments of what is wrong in life today. RIP George. We miss the hell out of you.
#24
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.
Connie Hirsch 1 year ago
His quick thinking and correct actions really did save lives -- he was the right man in the right place, and should have been hailed as a hero.
#25
Nicolaus Copernicus, theorized that the planets actually circled the sun instead of the other way around. The church initially accepted heliocentricacy but banned his views in 1600s.
#26
Corey Feldman exposing all the pedos in Hollywood.
Miss Tinker 1 year ago
But has he? He's talked about them for years but ever actually named names.
#27
I would say the UN Chief Inspector, Hans Blix, who said in a 2003 report that the UN investigation team had found no evidence of WMD in Iraq. Completely torn apart by the American government, public, and press. And yet… no WMD were ever found in Iraq.
Kathryn Baylis 1 year ago (edited)
I have always been an analytical person. I look at the evidence and try to figure out what’s really going on. Couple that with being a classic Doubting Thomas, and you have a lifetime of not taking the majority of stuff I’m told at face value and just finding out for myself (employers f*****g hate this, they’d prefer mindless automatons who take orders without question). So, when the WMD b******t came out, I took out my magnifying glass and looked at the published surveillance plane photos that were supposed to show WMDs. Couldn’t see ANYTHING that resembled any part of a missile. Nothing. I knew we were being gaslit into believing something that was patently untrue. But people told me I was wrong, although when I challenged them to show me the missiles in those pictures, they couldn’t find them either.
#28
Joseph Lister. One of the first doctors to publicly endorse germ theory and recommend disinfection. At the time surgeons would literally move from an amputation, to an autopsy, to the delivery room using the same tools often without even cleaning the gore from their hands and clothes. When Lister recommended comprehensive disinfection between procedures nearly the whole British medical community laughed at him. He spent years as a pariah gathering data from his own practice until he could finally prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that his methods reduced post-op infection by a staggering rate. Now he's known as "The father of modern surgery."
#29
Stanley Prusiner. Everyone who was anyone in science knew that proteins couldn't be an infectious agent. They weren't even alive! He suffered so much mockery and scepticism... until the mad cow disease, and kuru etc, were found to be precisely what he had described.
My “in my head” Voice 1 year ago
Another post that apparently assumes we already know the story.
#30
The journalists who maintained Lance Armstrong was doping when he was winning the Tour de France. I remember they were mocked because they admittedly went to extremes hunting for evidence. I remember reports of them sifting through Armstrong's trash.
Lance Armstrong was a great story, a testicular cancer survivor who beat the disease and went on to set the record for most Tour de France victories (was it 7?). He was untouchable. Anyone contesting he was cheating was shamed. I remember the journalists investigating him were mostly French, so they were dismissed because they were sour that an American was breaking the Tour de France records. I remember other Tour winners such as Greg Le Mond and Floyd Landis also contesting that Armstrong was cheating, and both being silenced/shamed. Landis had tested positive himself for doping so he wasn't considered a reliable source. I remember with Le Mond they dug into his history and brought up child abuse he suffered as a result of him making claims against Armstrong.
Turns out they were all right.
Pittsburgh rare 1 year ago
TBF, French journalists have a long history of hinting that foreign cyclists are cheating in the Tour, and when taken further, many times it's proven inconclusive or false. So not surprised nobody believed them.
#31
Hippies in the 70’s and black people at the time aswell were HUGE victims of the war on drugs and most of the drugs were proven to be vilified just so Nixon could arrest X people for any plant he wanted.
And let’s not forget heroin and other destructive and addictive drugs were funneled into minority areas via the GOV.
An actual quote from “John Ehrlichman” where he essentially “confessed”
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
#32
Anita Hill. I called my father as I was upset no one believed her. I knew what I was experiencing in the work place. She is my hero. Because of her the corporate company I worked for started promoting women into management roles. In my career as I am now retired, I was the first woman manager in four different locations, all different corporations. I didn't have a degree but had talent in my field. I attended a state conference where other managers in my field attended. I was the only women and didn't realize it til the next year's conference when another women entered the room. I was in that room because of my talent and until someone opened that door I couldn't go in. Anita unlocked that door.
Awesome At Being Autistic 1 year ago
Anita Hill was completely believable. Clarence Thomas should never have been confirmed.
#33
Remember when people thought Marie Curie's work was 'too dangerous'? Now we can't imagine medicine and technology without her discoveries.
#34
Martha Mitchell, after whom the Martha Mitchell Effect is named. Watergate whistleblower. She was the wife of the US AG at the time, John Mitchell. Despite being known privately to suffer from a fair bit of social anxiety, she was nevertheless outspoken and was seen as a little eccentric. This ended up being used against her by, among other people, her own husband (who at one point had her *kidnapped* in the middle of a phone call to a reporter over this), to thoroughly publicly discredit, mock, and belittle her when she blew the whistle on Watergate - though she initially believed her husband was an innocent fall guy. Nixon actually *blamed her* for Watergate, saying she was a distraction to AG Mitchell and that without her, Watergate never even would have happened! Which is just wild. Aside from her son, her family abandoned her until full details of Watergate became more widely publicly known and one of the people involved in the kidnapping admitted it had happened. The Martha Michell Effect is when a patient's true, but extreme claims are either incorrectly or maliciously dismissed as delusions by a medical (especially psychiatric) professional..
Kathryn Baylis 1 year ago
This effect didn’t just start with Martha Mitchell. It’s even going on for millennia—-if the person making the claims is a woman. Claiming a woman is crazy and putting her away in an institution—-especially if she’s 100% right—-has always been a method for male criminal m***********s of all classes to discredit her claims, cover up their nefarious activities, and get away with their dirty dealings.
#35
Dr. John Leal, the first man to chlorinate drinking water to kill germs. Only, chlorine is a deadly poison, so he did so secretly for a couple months at first. The judge was incredulous that a man would poison the water supply from which his own son drank, but Leal said that it was the safest water in the world, and he was right. Suitably diluted, the chlorine does no notable damage to humans worlds of hurt to bacteria.
Nicole Weymann 1 year ago
Surely better than germ infested sewage, but I prefer the approach of not poisoning drinking water it in the first place (aka ministering to the disease) rather than treating it with yet another additive (aka trating the symptoms).
#36
Mitt Romney during his presidential run said Putin was the biggest threat.
#37
Dr. Joseph Goldberger. He was the doctor that discovered the cause of the Pellagra epidemic that was sweeping the southern USA. He linked it to a bad diet, specifically a corn heavy diet. Cornmeal and grits were a southern staple, and and incredibly cheap way to feed orphans, prisoners, and the poor. Pellagra is caused by a lack of vitamin B3, aka niacin. Normally corn is high in niacin, but that niacin is locked up and unavailable to the human digestive system unless the corn is treated, aka "softened", typically with lye. In the early 1900's, manufactures switched to a different process that eliminated this treatment with lye. Corn was no longer softened. Then people, especially the poor, prisoners and orphans started dying of pellagra. Some orphanages and prisons had a death rate of over 40%. Tens of thousands were dying annually. Through a series of experiments, Goldberger proved that it was a corn-heavy diet that caused pellagra. He cured it in 2 institutions just by adding vegetables to their diet. He also caused it in a 14 prisoner "volunteers". But, and this is the important part: He was Jewish, and he was trying to tell Southerners they they were doing something wrong. So he was ridiculed and ignored. And pellagra continued to kill tens of thousands in the USA, and sicken tens of thousands more, for decades. When Goldberger died in 1929 pellagra continued to kill tens of thousands annually, 15 years after he had found the cure. It would continue to kill thousands for another couple of decades until someone more acceptable, Conrad Elvehjem, confirmed Goldberger's work in the late 1930's. All because southerners didn't want a Jew telling then that they were doing something wrong. He was insulting their southern heritage, by god! PS: "Insulting their southern heritage" is not my words. It's the words of the southern politicians who pulled his funding and campaigned for his removal from the US Public Health Service.
AndThenICommented 1 year ago
Yet Mexicans knew this all along - it’s a key step to making masa
#38
One of the lesser known ones is Hellen Keller. Her story of overcoming her disabilities as a young woman was often taught to children, but her adult life was largely excluded because of her "radical" ideas at the time which involved pushing for black rights, anti-lynching laws, early support of birth control, supporting liberal socialism, and she even co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union.
#39
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.
#40
Edward Snowden was infamously branded a traitor by the US Government for leaking things like Prism, after the american people had long suspected the government had been spying on them for years since the days of Patriot Act.
He was just simply the confirmation of all of our suspicions.
#41
Patrice Lumumba. The United Nations labeled him as an unreasonable, unprincipled madman. In reality he just wanted his country’s independence from Belgium because they had been torturing and oppressing the natives there since the days of king Leopold.
#42
William H. Seward, arranged the purchase of the Alaska territory from Russia for $7 Million dollars. The media and politician's of the era termed it "Seward's Folly" “Seward’s icebox” and President Andrew Johnson’s “polar bear garden.”
#43
Van Halen and the brown M&Ms.
A lot of people thought they were just being a******s when they had a clause in their contract that required a bowl of M&Ms to be filled but with all the brown ones removed.
This was actually their way to check if the people setting up the venue for lighting, pyro, electrical, etc, actually did all the work. If they had the bowl without brown ones, it meant the venue was trustworthy and safety precautions were followed. If there were any brown ones, it meant they cut corners somewhere and that meant lives at risk.
#44
Johnny Lyden when he said on the radio that Jimmy Saville was dodgy.
#45
The "leave Britney alone" guy, Chris Crocker.
Loggerdon:
Yeah, I remember laughing at him as a clown but later felt guilty after her story came to light.
What do you think ?
Anna Ekberg 1 year ago
What about the Panama Papers and the journalist that was murdered cause of this. Her name was Daphne Caruana Galizia btw.
Yoyolanda 1 year ago
Would be nice to have more background on all these people. I don't want to have to google everybody.
marianne eliza 1 year ago
And I'm sure the OP didn't want to have to type out everything when there are already multiple sources available at your finger tips. Plus, there's always that pesky plagiarism law.
Load More Replies... Brunning6 1 year ago
Oh, the comfort of being able to judge everyone who came before us. What fools they were. Why didn't they know what we know now...
Nikki Sevven 1 year ago
One of the most difficult parts about studying history is remembering that you can't judge the actions of historical figures from your own modern perspective.
Load More Replies... Anna Ekberg 1 year ago
What about the Panama Papers and the journalist that was murdered cause of this. Her name was Daphne Caruana Galizia btw.
Yoyolanda 1 year ago
Would be nice to have more background on all these people. I don't want to have to google everybody.
marianne eliza 1 year ago
And I'm sure the OP didn't want to have to type out everything when there are already multiple sources available at your finger tips. Plus, there's always that pesky plagiarism law.
Load More Replies... Brunning6 1 year ago
Oh, the comfort of being able to judge everyone who came before us. What fools they were. Why didn't they know what we know now...
Nikki Sevven 1 year ago
One of the most difficult parts about studying history is remembering that you can't judge the actions of historical figures from your own modern perspective.
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