The idea of "cadaverous particles" in fact appears to be at least partly a bit of pseudo-science: There are no such things. Semmelweis had accidentally stumbled onto germs, but he didn't know it, and therefore his reasoning was flawed even if it gave a correct result; If the doctors stopped dissecting corpses, that would have reduced things just as much as the mid-wife ward. If he'd understood why washing hands actually worked, he could have had the mid-wives do so as well and save many more lives.

I also don't think it's correct, at least using the Semmelweis example, to say that "we haven't culturally evolved". Semmelweis's failure to spread what he learned was at least as much victim of his own personality as anything else: "Semmelweis was not very tactful. He publicly berated people who disagreed with him and made some influential enemies".

Linus Pauling famously and successfully used all his night to reject the idea of quasicrystals. The Updated concept of crystals was adopted shortly after his death; i can’t say I was able to track the history - there is an enormous amount of whitewashing - but it seems initially everyone rejected quasicrystals, but eventually people started to look at ahechtman’s evidence - and accept it, except not publicly because the luminaries of the field led by Pauling rejected it. And then Pauling’s funeral allowed the science to finally advance.