I'm not a physicist, so I can't address how intradisciplinary conflicts and rivalries are handled. My training was in medicine. I know it's sometimes difficult to change thought patterns. But it does happen. When I was in school (early-mid 70s) the conventional wisdom was that peptic ulcers are caused by excess acid production. But in the early 80s, Australian doctors Barry Marshall, a GI specialist, and Robin Warren, a pathologist, reported finding curved bacteria in biopsied ulcer specimens. They named it Helicobacter pylori, and postulated that ulcers resulted from an infection with this bacterium. The idea was thought to be ridiculous. But as more work was done, by the early 90s, it was realized that they were right on. It was a major paradigm shift, that took about 10 years to become mainstream. We now know that over 90% of duodenal ulcers, and 80% of gastric ulcers are caused by H. pylori. Effective treatment requires antibiotics as well as acid-blocking medication. And in 2005, Marshall and Warren won the Nobel Prize. So it may take time, but good science is self-correcting.
