Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Can you think of another example where there has been a mass move away from the status quo to a new theory which turns out to be wrong (or at least, wronger than the old one)? I feel there would have to be quite compelling evidence to cause that kind of shift.

You know, llamabeast, I don't know. I'm not much of a scientific historian. (I mean, I could say "what about phrenology?" but I don't know whether it ever caught on to the degree you're asking for.) If you were to go looking for precedent, you'd probably have to look in a field that has the salient characteristics of climatology: the subject is too complex for experimental study, so experiments focus on studying the behavior of simplified models of the subject. The only other field I know of like that is economics, but as I said I don't know much about the history of economic theory so I don't know whether it's experienced fads.

-Max