How many times has a single scientist been chastised by the broader scientific community at first and then their original idea finally rejected as false?

Almost always. Have you met reviewer number 2? I suppose he's right most of the time, and feels vindicated as a result. I'm just troubled by the the modulus, the work of merit, rare and precious as it is, that suffers from the statistically justified bias for false negatives.

I can certainly understand opposing an idea for diverse reasons, valid or invalid, but I can't understand how it is that some people seem to feel that opposing ideas on the basis of the balance of their features, rather than digging into the conditional structure and examining their merits and demerits, is something to be proud of, rather than ashamed. I consider that many of that group may have been anti-maskers as well, and that eventually evolution will take care of it, but I probably won't see the benefit of that.