When continental drift was considered pseudoscience

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n...-90353214/

"Wegener called his idea “continental displacement” and presented it in a lecture to Frankfurt’s Geological Association early in 1912. The minutes of the meeting noted that there was “no discussion due to the advanced hour,” much as when Darwinian evolution made its debut. Wegener published his idea in an article that April to no great notice. Later, recovering from wounds he suffered while fighting for Germany during World War I, he developed his idea in a book, The Origin of Continents and Oceans, published in German in 1915. When it was published in English, in 1922, the intellectual fireworks exploded.
Lingering anti-German sentiment no doubt intensified the attacks, but German geologists piled on, too, scorning what they called Wegener’s “delirious ravings” and other symptoms of “moving crust disease and wandering pole plague.” The British ridiculed him for distorting the continents to make them fit and, more damningly, for not describing a credible mechanism powerful enough to move continents. At a Royal Geographical Society meeting, an audience member thanked the speaker for having blown Wegener’s theory to bits—then thanked the absent “Professor Wegener for offering himself for the explosion.”
But it was the Americans who came down hardest against continental drift. A paleontologist called it “Germanic pseudo­-science” and accused Wegener of toying with the evidence to spin himself into “a state of auto-intoxication.” Wegener’s lack of geological credentials troubled another critic, who declared that it was “wrong for a stranger to the facts he handles to generalize from them.” He then produced his own cutout continents to demonstrate how awkwardly they fit together. It was geology’s equivalent of O.J. Simpson’s glove."

http://www.scientus.org/Wegener-Continental-Drift.html

"The authorities in the various disciplines attacked him as an amateur that did not fully grasp their own subject. More importantly however, was that even the possibility of Continental Drift was a huge threat to the authorities in each of the disciplines.
Radical viewpoints threaten the authorities in a discipline. Authorities are expert in the current view of their discipline. A radical view could even force experts to start over again. One of Alfred Wegener's critics, the geologist R. Thomas Chamberlain, suggested just that :
"If we are to believe in Wegener's hypothesis we must forget everything which has been learned in the past 70 years and start all over again."
He was right. "

[Laird]

Moved to "Other Topics" per the guidelines on science-related threads.

The Continental Drift theory was introduced into a scientific field where there was no firmly established paradigm. The question about how to explain the similar geology, fossil record, flora and fauna found in South America and Africa had no universally accepted answer. The degree of ridicule was surely due to the sheer improbability of the claim. Put aside the benefit of hindsight and try to imagine how you'd react if someone told you that the continents could move. The idea seems absurd. 

The argument that really appeared to sink Continental Drift was put forward in 1943, after G.G. Simpson’s lecture extolling the virtues of a Permanentist view of the globe over Land Bridges or Continental Drift. Given that strong evidence for the movement of continents started to be found in the late 1960s, that's not really enough time for antagonists to die off and a younger generation to take its place, especially given the speed with which the theory was accepted once the new evidence was in. So we're left with an example of science behaving pretty much as you'd expect it to behave (assuming you don't expect it to be perfect): new theories are robustly tested and accepted once they become useful as a predictive model or explanation for certain phenomena.

The debate over Continental Drift was much more nuanced than the Smithsonian article insists, as the author seems keen to ignore any voice in support of Continental Drift more completely than any contemporary critic of the theory ever did! There were strong opinions on both sides, and Wegener had his allies in science, although you wouldn’t know that by reading the Smithsonian. In fact, it seems to me that American authors are the ones most likely to portray the debate as “all against Wegener” in an apparent attempt at making their country’s scientists seem less old-fashioned and reactionary than the rest of the world.

So we're left with an example of science behaving pretty much as you'd expect it to behave (assuming you don't expect it to be perfect): new theories are robustly tested and accepted once they become useful as a predictive model or explanation for certain phenomena.

According to this view, how is science expected to behave when there are phenomena but a lack of theory?

According to this view, how is science expected to behave when there are phenomena but a lack of theory?

Observation and guesswork coupled with personal pride and politics. Like most human endeavours.

Preferably not kneejerk denial.

Preferably not kneejerk denial.

True  But I hope you're not suggesting that all scientists of the time instantly rejected the theory without thinking about it.

True  But I hope you're not suggesting that all scientists of the time instantly rejected the theory without thinking about it.

No - I was thinking more of some sceptical reactions to psi (which I presume was the idea underlying Typoz's question).

No - I was thinking more of some sceptical reactions to psi (which I presume was the idea underlying Typoz's question).

I actually took Typoz's question at face value. But I guessed the reason for Brian posting the thread was to imply a similarity between the treatment of psi research to the treatment given out to Continental Drift.

Either way, there's a lot to learn from the debate over Continental Drift, but articles that reduce it to a simple case of "good people versus bad people" won't help in that respect.

No - I was thinking more of some sceptical reactions to psi (which I presume was the idea underlying Typoz's question).

Well, of course I had some thoughts along those lines. But at the same time, I'd like it to be considered in a neutral fashion, without trying to score points or paint things in a particularly good or bad light.