Instances Throughout History Where People Were Right But No One Believed Them

Barry Marshall, a maverick Australian physician, found himself in an uphill battle that challenged established medical dogma. In the 1980s, when the prevailing wisdom held that peptic ulcers were primarily caused by stress and lifestyle factors, Marshall proposed an audacious theory: that a bacterial infection, Helicobacter pylori, was the true culprit. His claims were met with skepticism, even ridicule, from the medical community.

Desperate to prove his point, Marshall took a monumental risk by ingesting a petri dish of the bacteria himself, ultimately developing gastritis as evidence of its harmful effects. His self-experimentation paved the way for a medical revolution, as it became clear that bacterial infection was a major cause of ulcers.