People Describe The Historical Figures Who Were Mocked But Later Proven Right

It's hard when the people we once thought of as "heroes" are discovered to kind of suck. Hard.

Live Strong

"Greg lemond. In 2001 he said lance Armstrong was probably doping. He was threatened he took a huge image hit and his business opportunities suffered."

"He never let up on lance despite the media campaigns, threats, damage to his reputation and business, and the recrimination of his peers in the cycling community. Until surprise surprise in 2012 it came out that lance Armstrong was doping. Who could have foreseen that? If only someone had told us."

"Oh wait. Greg Lemond did. A decade ago."

Cheeseyex

A British Gentleman Would Never--Oh Wait, They Did

"John Rae. Very skilled arctic explorer who unlike most of the rest of Europeans at the time wasn’t above learning from the Inuit. He was largely successful because of his willingness to learn from them and use their clothing and diet and techniques."

"Anyway, about ten years after the Franklin Expedition was lost John Rae was out looking for clues what happened because the British Admiralty had a standing reward of £10,000 for anyone who had credible information about the expeditions fate. He found some physical remnants of the expedition and had met with Inuit who’d seen some of the last surviving members of the expedition. They related to him how they’d been taken by disease, lack of food, and how some of them finally succumbed to cannibalism."

"Rae took this information back to England, where society was absolutely outraged how he dared to spin such drivel. Surely no sophisticated gentlemen of the hero’s character that would be in Sir John Franklin’s expedition would act so savagely!"

"John Rae never got the award. Years later someone else did who told of a story that was correct also to some degree, but less than Rae had been."

"In modern times bone fragments have been found with telltale cut marks, thereby proving John Rae and the Inuit right."

rhutanium

Undoing All The Good Work They Did

"Johnny Rotten"

"Banned from the BBC for ousting Jimmy Saville as being a horrendous pedophile."

"Some 500 cases of abuse. Had his own set of keys to a psychiatric hospital where he would frequently abuse vulnerable children."

Danuta_

Some people become so publicized for their mockery, that their situations and scenarios become common knowledge, the butt of jokes, and fuel for feeling bad for being so wrong later.

Don't Joke About It

"Lindy Chamberlain. A dingo really did eat her baby. :("

TinyGreenTurtles

"Even at the time of Azaria's death aboriginal trackers that were brought in said a dingo did it but because they weren't white no one listened and the poor family was put through hell after losing there child."

ipoopcubes

And A String Of Awful Copycats Followed This Legitimate Case

"Stella Liebeck, the lady who got burned with McDonald's hot coffee. The media mocked her and accused her of a frivolous lawsuit but it was an ongoing problem that McDonald's served dangerously hot coffees that had injured many others."

"The coffee was hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns to her pelvic region and she was hospitalized for 8 days while she had to get skin grafts, and continued medical care for 2 years related to the burns. She originally just wanted her medical bills covered but McDonald's tried giving her an insultingly low amount, so then she was forced to open a lawsuit. The courts rightfully sided with her and forced McDonald's to regulate the temperature on their hot beverages."

IdRatherNotNo

Speaking Out To This Day

"Monica Lewinsky. That poor woman was dragged through the mud and seeing everyone reassess what was done to her has been bittersweet."

"ETA: Bittersweet bc more people seem to understand she was a victim (sweet), but she was really young, and decades of her life were spent being a public punching bag (bitter)"

happycos

Some of these stories, when examined with the power of medical hindsight, shows we really don't know anything about medicine.

It's A Wonder All Humans Aren't All Dead

"Joseph Lister"

"First proposed that germs caused post-operative infections, and recommended that surgical instruments be sterilized between operations."

"People thought he was nuts."

Positive-Source8205

"Yep, in addition the this, Joseph’s peers in medical community actively dismissed his suggestions for years due to the fact that they could then be considered culpable in causing harm to patients"

"Ironically, delayed uptake continued to harm patients"

95CJH

How Are We Not All Dead?

"Ignác Semmelweis"

"First doctor to champion hand washing as a means to prevent spreading infection. Everyone made fun of him."

saltyFr3nchFry

"He also noticed out of 2 maternity clinics there was a higher death rate in one because students were doing postmortems and then going straight to the clinic without washing their hands. Who would have thought dead people matter wouldn't go well with pregnant women and new born babies"

OmegaStealthJam

Remove A Handle, Save Lives

"John snow in 1854 tried to tell everyone about cholera, and how it was being caused by the water supply, no one believed him until he took illegal action and saved many lives"

Verticlefornow

"He didn't do anything illegal, he collected evidence and took it to the local government who had the pump handle removed. It was actually late in the outbreak, if not well after the outbreak so how many He saved with that action is questionable, but the methods and the use of spatial epidemiology was groundbreaking."

VectorB

Oh Yeah, Worldwide Pandemic.

"The doctor in China who was arrested for trying to stop the spread of Covid from the start"

youburyitidigitup

"They knew it was coronavirus by 2nd December 2019. They knew it was a cousin virus to SARS and MERS. They did everything it their power to keep it quiet til January..."

"...Also I do understand looking back that we can seem to trace back the data/ rabbit hole to June/ July 2019, some even can go back to March 2019. I'm pointing out that I simply heard/ read the officially "there's a new coronavirus in Wuhan" in digital print on that date. That's when this all started for me personally."

Turfanator

"And his name was Dr. Li Wenliang. May he never be forgotten. salutes"

safer_than_ever

“delirious ravings”

"Alfred Wagner hypothesized plate tectonics in the 1920’s, but this wasn’t an accepted notion until the 50’s. He was a meteorologist, and copped a lot of flak from the geological community at the time."

SaraBunks

"This is the one I was looking for. He was ridiculed and talked down on because of his plate tectonics theory, calling his ideas 'delirious ravings.'”

Daninumblr

Dingo Trauma

"Lindy Chamberlain. A dingo really did eat her baby. :("

TinyGreenTurtles

"People used to say that 'a dingo ate my baby!' Mockingly as a joke when I was in school. I never knew what it was from, then when I found out I was horrified and completely disgusted that people I knew were running around mocking a woman who lost her baby to a wild animal attack for fun."

CannibalCapra

DNA BEFORE

"Barbara McClintock, she postulated the existence of transposons (certain types of genes) in DNA BEFORE anybody even knew what the actual structure of DNA is like, she was widely mocked by the scientific community at the time. Transposons were later confirmed to exist and she was awarded the Nobel."

ThousandSunnySenpai

Floods

"Duff Roblin, the Premier of Manitoba. After the 1950 flood, Roblin's government initiated the Red River Floodway project. The floodway diverts part of the river around the city. At the time he was mocked and a lot of people thought it was a waste of money, because 'a flood like that will never happen again.'"

"It's been estimated that it's saved $40 billion CAD in flood damages since it was completed in 1968. I was there for the '97 flood. The floodway saved my home and my in-laws' home."

deagh

Depletion

"Sherry Rowland. Discovered the effect of CFCs on ozone depletion and received an immense level of blow back from industry. Not only that, but invited talks and collabs were rescinded within the scientific community. Poor guy was ostracized. 20 years later after his (and Molina’s) discovery, he’s finally recognized with a Nobel prize."

GadgetGo

Allergies

"Alexander Fleming, the man who discovered Penicillin, spent almost 10 years trying to convince the medical bodies of his time that it was worth investing time and resources to experiment with it, but was basically told to pound sand despite the respect he had prior to the discovery. Lot of good it did me, I was lucky enough to be born allergic. Happy for the rest of you at least."

The-BIG-Plant

Capsized

"Henry Freeman, a lifeboatman in Whitby. He tried to get the other lifeboatmen to wear cork lifejackets, but no-one would but him. During a great storm, the lifeboat was launched several times to help struggling vessels and sailors. On their sixth launch, disaster struck and the lifeboat capsized. Only Henry survived thanks to his cork life jacket. They became compulsory for lifeboatmen shortly afternoon."

alizare

80s Noise

"Richard Stallman. Warned us back in the 80s that if we allow corporations to rule the internet that nobody will have privacy or freedom on the web, among many other things. r/stallmanwasright"

ProtonSlack

Truth

"Courtney Love on Weinstein."

lundy7881

"There's a small bit in the book 'The Game' (highly recommend not reading it). The author makes fun of Courtney the whole way through because she's reading books on fraud and alleging that people have stolen her money. At the end, he adds in a sentence or two about how someone in their house looks at her finances and goes, 'Wow, it's true."

SkinHairNails

Concussion

"Dr Bennet Omalu who found that American football players had chronic traumatic encephalopathy/brain concussions which were slowly affecting their neurological and psychological functions. He was strongly opposed at first but then proved right. His biographic movie is named 'Concussion.'"

sweettooth_92

Just keep an open mind going forward.

And wash your hands.