To wonder what repectable scientific notions of today....

[RubyGates]

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

[cumfy]

Also I expect we will have an exceedingly accurate "theory" of peak oil.

(Because it will have happened :) )

[Lueji]

Creationism, fingers crossed.

Vaccines for parasites. Nothing has worked properly so far.
Only for some viruses and few bacteria.

Prions are another area awaiting major developments.

[sashh]

Things are changing all the time.

Your appendix does have a role in digestion, and appedicitis can be treated with antibiotics.

[CoteDAzur]

Creationism? Thread title asks for "respectable scientific notions of today", not idiotic unscientific ones.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

You can't prove something doesn't exist.



I agree about cancer, and about mental illness.

I think - or hope - people will have discovered how various conditions are connected, because we know that things like dyslexia and autism and ADHD are sometimes co-morbid, and I think we will learn more about how they intersect, and probably we will end up with completely new terminology for understanding all of that. Whether that counts as a scientific notion being abandoned, I'm not sure.

It's not terribly reputable, but I do hope evolutionary psychology will be given up on - it's cracking under the strain already from what I can see.

[CoteDAzur]

Prove what doesn't exist?

[SledYuleCated]

I imagine ASDs will prod to be a range of different disorders/conditions/things with some similarities but quite different causes.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

It's not possible to prove something doesn't exist, except by demonstrating it within a finite system.

[PessaryPam]

My money is on anthropomorphic climate change. I think the planet and the cloud cover has a built in stabilisation mechanism. Otherwise it would have been game over long before now.

[Lamazeroo]

That consuming cows milk is necessary for calcium.

[GrumpySod]

The other problem with items in link is that a lot of it wasn't science; it was moral philosophy. And as pointed out, even in their time some of it was widely derided (eg: phrenology). Mere conjecture about how things worked, not proper scientific theories as we understand that term now. With the advent of Scientific methods the weakest theories didn't take long to dispel.

What I can't understand they didn't include were:

Sun goes around the earth
&
Making Gold was possible from other things
&
The four humours: the idea that we were equally composed of 4 liquids
&
That everything was made of four elements: Earth Air Fire Water
&
how the heart worked, or how valves worked, or what the liver did, lots of loopy theories about those used to be widely accepted
&
Racist ideas about superior types of humans

Those are all more popular & entrenched ideas than a lot of what did make that list.

[EllieArroway]

None of those things listed were actually "theories" in the currently accepted sense of the word. At best they were hypotheses.

None of the accepted scientific theories of today are likely to be "laughed" at 100 years from now. Things may have moved on & we'll almost certainly have a far greater understanding - but evolution, germ theory, BB theory, relativity etc etc are so completely confirmed as being true that they won't be laughable mistakes at any time in the future.

String theory (in spite of it's name) is not actually a theory, it's a hypothesis - a possible explanation for the Holy Grail of Physics....a Unified Theory of Everything. Things like this may fall by the wayside as new & better data emerges because that's what science does - it changes it's mind & goes where the evidence takes it.

But I don't doubt for a moment that the science of the future will uncover many, many extraordinary things that we can't even imagine now. Pisses me off no end that I probably won't be around to see any of it.

[javotte]

Climate change.
Low fat diets.
Freud.
And a few other ones that are still totally X-rated, so I won't even mention them.

[EllieArroway]

Creationism is not, and never has been, even vaguely scientific. It doesn't even reach the standard of hypothesis since it's not based on any observed phenomena.

[ICBINEG]

I agree that none of the things listed were scientific theories....common sense based theories turn out to be wrong all the time...but scientific theories just tend to get refined.

The biggest thing that will get laughed at in the future is the idea that the general public can understand science.

Some proportion of the general public still think that AGW is unlikely, that MMR might give you autism and that if you give your kid some medicine and the kid got better it MUST have been the medicine that did it. There is no point trying to educate people like that about science.

[CMOTDibbler]

Dark matter - its a total fudge factor

[ICBINEG]

hmmm is dark matter a theory though? I thought is was more of a hypothesis (nearly said guideline there - watched too much pirates of the C over xmas).

[Lueji]

Ok, the mention of creationism was not in line with the title, but neither are most things mentioned in this thread.

Human made climate change is still controversial, so not respectable, as such.

Different diets are hardly respectable scientific theories as well.
And so on.

It was mentioned mostly in response to Avuncular's:
"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"

Another quack "theory" I hope will be dismissed is homeopathy.
Or, we'll be very surprised and someone will manage to prove it works.

Among trully established and respectable theories....
the impossibility of faster than light travel. That would be nice to be disproved.

[ICBINEG]

wtf? You hope homeopathy will be disproved??

Are you unaware that it already has been? More than any other quack hypothesis EVER?

This is what I mean about not bothering to teach science to the general public....

[DancesWithWoolEnPointe]

The theory of evolution by natural selection only is definitely on trouble. Le Marc Is suddenly not being laughed at any more.

I agree with someone up Fred, ASD definitely requires some defining and will no doubt turn out to be a pile of unrelated disorders.

I think homeopathy will get a lot of sniggers from future scientist even more than it gets now

[BalloonSlayer]

You mention Freud, javotte, and I agree that a lot of his theories seem like nonsense. However, when he started publishing his work, the notion that how you are treated as a child affects the sort of adult you become was totally new. Victorians believed someone who behaved badly was born bad. So a lot of Freud's ideas were so good that we don't even know that they were his theories - because to us they seem like common sense.

[Lueji]

ICBINEG
I said dismissed, not disproved. You could try and read properly too.

I meant that it's existence will be eliminated from general perception and being used to make lots of money from unsuspecting people.

I mean, even recently, I have had a paediatrician tout it to me, ahem, a scientist, and a biologist. I was only polite enough not to call him crazy.

[LeBFG]

Within the scientific community, climate change is a respectable science!

Freud has been largely superseded I thought?

To dispel evolutionary psychology, you would first have to disprove evolution through natural selection.

[Lueji]

No one working in evolution thinks that evolution occurs by natural selection only.
And even Darwin proposed sexual selection, which is quite different from natural selection.

[LeBFG]

Fraid to agree with Lueji - someone needs to tell, like, the whole of France that homeopathy doesn't work.