Some scientists through time have constantly not only assured us that they were correct through the years, but some are still doing the same thing. It has not always been scientific theory that has prompted scientists to state the theories that they have believed in, it has also been politics and religion. I guess a great example of religion forcing science to do it's bidding, was the Galileo case. Galileo Galilei was the first known scientist to aim a telescope at the sky. Telescopes had been around for several years before that, but they were used primarily on the battlefields of the world. Can you imagine how Galileo felt when he first looked into the heavens and discovered that the Earth was not the center of the universe and not even the center of the solar system? The church immediately.put a stop to that information getting out The poor guy was almost tried for being a heretic. He had to recant the truth and spend the latter part of his life under house arrest. The other scientists that were involved with the church continued to teach the absolute wrong thing, that the planets and stars revolved around the Earth. The worst part of this whole thing, is that the truth was right in front of them by this time and they refused to let people in on it.

Looking back to the beginning of the 20th century and onward for 20 or 30 years, we see some scientists pushing the benefits of radiation. Some of these guys were actually telling people that they should drink water laced with radiation, because it was good for them. One guy actually drank hundreds of bottles of radioactive liquid and the story goes that his jaw fell off. They told us that radiation was our friend. Radioactive devices were even installed in shoe stores, so that people could see where their feet were in the shoes that they had bought. Much of this was not a case of any type of fraud, because scientists actually believed what they preached at the time. The proof of this was the fact that they never protected themselves from X-rays and because of this they met with untimely deaths. Today when an X-ray is taken, the doctor, or person taking the picture, either leaves the room or goes behind a protective wall. One has to remember that today X-rays are far less potent then they were years ago, so you can imagine the huge doses of radiation people were getting in the old days.

Everyone knows that at one time, the theory that the Earth was flat was the dominant theory. What made this very strange was the fact that the Ancient Greeks had known the Earth was round, thousands of years before. Science had taken a turn and had went backwards. If there is one thing that I hate more that getting bad scientific theory, that is getting bad scientific theory after the correct theory had been know and somehow disregarded. A question that has been discussed quite often was whether a civilization could revert to a less technical period in their development. One situation that is often cited is this exact event, along with others. The dark ages in Europe were actually less advanced that the Romans. Much of science had been lost and what was being taught was less advanced than what had been generally known. It seems that scientific breakthroughs are routinely lost throughout history. Engineering secrets, such as the building of the pyramids and certain South American cities that were built on top of mountains are still unknown today. What does this mean? It means that some superior method of construction should be what is taught, but instead some inferior methods are being taught.

Sometimes scientists come along and alter the work of others and it is not for the better. A case in point was the work of James Clerk Maxwell. A good part of his work was disregarded by the next mathematician who decided to continue his work. He didn't think that it was important. It turns out that Maxwell's work is the basis for thermodynamics, even without the missing sequences. Imagine what is going to happen now that the lost bits have been found. Who knows what effect this might have on our current understanding of things like this? For almost 200 years we believed that we knew this subject and it turns out that there just might be a lot more to it then we currently know. Perhaps we will gain a bigger insight into things like propulsion and that will help us to reach the planets faster. It is amazing how improper scientific knowledge can hold people back for a real long time. This was especially true in times past, where it was considered a sin by the church to display advanced thinking if the church thought that it was contrary to their teaching.

For thousands of years, science believed that spirits and ghosts were responsible for specific diseases. You may wonder how I know this, because this is not a widely known fact? I know it because an ancient country named Mesopotamia discovered writing and left an incredible set of records. The Mesopotamians used a language called cuneiform. This was the first written language folks and these people left us a medical encyclopedia of about 20 tablets. We even know the name of their first doctor, he was ashipu, spelled with a small 'a'. He would diagnose the sickness. If the disease was internal, ashipu would determine which god or demon was causing the problem. He would then try and determine if the disease was caused by a sin on the part of the person. While this was not what we are used to today, it was a start and humans had to start medical treatment somewhere. When it came to wounds, the medical treatise, which was known as the asu, stated that wounds should be treated by washing, bandaging and making plasters. This is pretty good advice, even today, but these tablets were written in about 2100 B.C. When the Mesopotamians disappeared as a race, the neighboring peoples continued to write in cuneiform. for many years.

There are some indications that the earliest people used observation to determine different scientific principles and the earliest of these is thought to be about reproduction. It is believed ancient people observed the birth of animals and humans and determined that the internal structure of a body, whether it be human or animal, was determined by the organs and such of the parenting person or creature. They knew that some offspring resembled their parents and formed the opinion that somehow the parents were passing certain characteristics down to the children. Obviously they knew nothing about chromosomes and genes, but they watched and their opinions were not so far fetched, but yes, they were wrong. Things advanced somewhat with the invention of the microscope and cells were discovered. In about the 14th century it was thought that entire miniature beings were contained somewhere within the body and that is where offspring came from, in some mysterious process. Yep, science was wrong again.

There are more than a few things that are thought to be in error today, as far as scientific beliefs are concerned. Many of these things have to do with the universe, but they are certainly not limited to that topic. Let's look at how we measure distances of far off objects in space. As I have said before, we use a calculation based on the shifting of light to the red or blue sides. If an object's light is shifted to the red, that is thought to mean that it is traveling away from us, if it's light is shifted to the blue, then it is thought to be traveling towards us. Some in the scientific community have suspected for years that this might be wrong, either in part or in total. Recently an object was found in space that had an extreme shift to the red light spectrum. This was taken to mean that it was traveling away from us at a very fast speed. It turned out that this could not be the case, because the objects that were seen behind it were calculated to be closer and traveling toward us. You can't be closer than an object you are behind. Something is wrong here. Another problem is the Big Bang Theory is not operating as predicted. That states that all matter was concentrated into one object that exploded forming everything and that is why everything is expanding. The theory goes on to state that everything will eventually slow down, be attracted back to it's original point and explode again. The problem with this is that everything is speeding up and it is now felt that this may go on forever. Will science always believe this? Probably not, eventually this theory will probably fall onto the ash heap of bad scientific history.

When it comes to science, much gets discarded over time. It has to or there would be no advancement. Sometimes science advances in tiny baby steps. When man first realized that evil spirits were not causing disease, but it was a natural phenomena, that was a big leap forward, but so was the original fact that disease existed, no matter what the cause. Think about it, if we didn't know that disease existed, people would be just dropping like flies and we wouldn't be doing anything meaningful to help them. If the Chinese didn't discover gunpowder, we never would have made it to the Moon, because that gunpowder was the basis for early rocket launches that led up to the Apollo flights that landed on the Moon. It didn't matter that early gunpowder was thought to have magical powers or not, all that mattered was that it worked. The same may be true someday in the cure of diseases like Cancer. We know that Cancer exists, we have a rough idea of how it works, but we are probably wrong about at least part of our conclusions, unless data is being withheld from us by drug companies that want to continue to sell expensive Cancer treatment drugs. I hope that is not the case and I am assuming it isn't for now. If it isn't, then some of the things we think about Cancer may be entirely wrong. For example Cancer may be many different diseases, not one disease at all.

Science, while being wrong at times, usually leads to advancement and we have to remember this.