Mumsnet Talk

will be laughed at in a hundred year's time?

Things that were believed by scientists in the past:
www.toptenz.net/top-10-most-famous-scientific-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-wrong.php

Climate change.

Almost certainly.

Sorry, I meant climate change as a result of man's actions.

none. we'll all have died, due to climate change.

none.

Seriously?

You don't think anything supposedly scientific will ever be disproved again?

blog.chron.com/sciguy/2010/11/the-top-10-most-spectacularly-wrong-widely-held-scientific-theories/

See, I hadn't noticed that ulcers weren't caused by stress.
But apparently the chap who noticed they weren't got a Nobel prize.

My bet's on String Theory...
And I think we'll redeiscover "the ether" and decide that's how things really work.

I would say a lot of stuff to do with space. I think they'll find out a lot more about what goes on in the universe, how big it is and so on.

And probably stuff to do with the brain as well.

DH saw me reading the list in the link and suggested that the reason why we can't see Vulcan now is that it's been destroyed - I think he's got his timelines a bit muddled.

Some of current thinking in physics...the current models (as far as I can see) seem to be straining to try to explain the stuff we don't yet have a good handle on - dark matter and energy for instance. Surely there's got to be some game-changing new ideas which will supercede existing models?

I think there'll be a lot more found out about the brain. It's fascinating what it can do but I don't really think we have any real understanding of it yet.

And a much deeper understanding of particle physics. I also think we'll learn a lot more about the interconnectiveness within the body and how it regulates itself.

>I think there'll be a lot more found out about the brain.

yes, for sure - but the OPs question was whether any currently accepted theories will be falsified. I think with the brain we know we don't have anything like the full picture yet - so the question is how much of our current partial 'knowledge' is wrong.

oooo, luff freds like these,, i will go away and ave a fink ;)

I think what kim147 's point (and mine) was that the way we understand things like, for example, depression will change enormously. I can imagine we will be totally shocked at how we treated mental illness these days.

Barry Marshall didn't just prove that ulcers are caused by h.pylori bacteria, he tested his theory on himself. Bit of a hero!

Doctors used to believe autism was caused by 'refrigerator mothers' (because if you don't know what causes a medical condition, it's easier to blame women than admit you really don't know, apparently ). I wonder what conditions we think we know about now will turn out to have completely different causes to those we currently assume?

climate change for sure
Probably weaning advice.They must be weaned by 4 weeks or be doomed.

I always think chemotherapy/radiotherapy as a treatment for cancer will be laughable at some point in the future when we know more about causes/treatments. I mean, firing radioactiveness at people? I admit I don't know that much about how it works

Our understanding of cancer will increase dramatically over the next few years. I studied biochemistry many years ago and did a lot of molecular biology. The theory of "junk" DNA seems to have been revised now - non-coding DNA has a lot of functions which it seems we are just finding out.

There will be a lot more interesting and personalised ways of treating cancer.
I find medical science fascinating (maybe I should have stayed in it) - we've now learnt the gut has its own brain so that has led to a whole new understanding of IBS and gut issues.

I don't see how ether will be "rediscovered" given that it has been proven not to exist through multiple experiments over a hundred years ago. Not to mention the fact that we manage to land people on the moon and send robots to Mars, calculating their trajectories without allowing for ether.

climate change skeptics will finally be shown to be the numpties they are.

The problem is that plenty of the ideas in that link are many centuries old, it's not like they were all popular 100 years ago, anything but.

I imagine that things like string theory will be massively revised in 100 years. We might finally get our heads around what the forces of gravity & magnetisim actually are, in 100 years.

There is so much more to understand, still, in the areas of neuroscience and psychology. Behavioural science still in infancy in many ways, too.

Electric shock therapy for children and adults with autism.

Evolution - once David Attenborough has fossilised.

Darwinian 'natural selection' is one thing - but development from primeval slime is a bit harder to prove. More of a leap of faith IYSWIM

Wholegrains and low fat being a healthy diet.

kim147 wasn't that article absolutely fascinating? I imagine that the idea of this second brain will change our understanding of brain chemistry/mental health immensely over the coming years.

I second the low fat diet thing, that's turned out really well right.