Yeah that's a good one.

Another is recommending trans-fat based margarine over butter. That was counter-productive health advice that took decades to reverse - even although the evidence it was based on was extremely flimsy.

Once the group-think machine gets going in a direction, it has a tremendous amount of inertia.

>That was counter-productive health advice that took decades to reverse - even although the evidence it was based on was extremely flimsy.

I think this was more a case of lobbying by certain agricultural producers than ignorance. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14823257_Food_Lobbi...

True, but the point still stands: a lot of people can be influenced by something no matter its origins. Once they can say "X thousand can't be wrong" then you and your pesky idea backed up by facts and evidence can go to hell.

Sadly history is full of such occurrences.

Append Ignaz Semmelweis to this important list, which is a plump one.

Tectonic plates was another big one.

Peoples position on that one shifted very slowly.

sir, may I see your dad license please?

It’s not his fault that the joke was dad-worthy.

But when they did shift, it was a...

This is a current fun topic with some controversy related to tectonic plates: do solar flares cause earthquakes?

https://astronomy.com/news/2020/07/powerful-eruptions-on-the...

Despite being a really stupid-sounding premise, that is actually kind of interesting.

Another: Many World's Interpretation of QM. Not known to be true but less ridiculed and more widely subscribed.

The inventor of the COVID mRNA vaccine was fired from her tenure position because UPenn thought the idea wouldn't work.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfi...