<p>Well, aside from pure politics or religion (e.g. Copernicus and the heliocentric theory), I still do not believe very many groundbreaking ideas were ridiculed and rejected by a majority of scientists, although you have cited some interesting counter-examples. What, to me, is much more likely is that obscure work is done and then many years later is revisited due to advances in technology.</p>
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<p>This is true. I would even go so far as to say that the scientific method, as taught in grade school, does not begin to account for how many important results were obtained. Many discoveries were only tangentially related to what the researchers originally set out to do (i.e. “accidents”, like the discovery of the cosmic background radiation).</p>