People say a lot of stupid stuff. And we judge them for it. But every now and then, over time, enough evidence emerges to prove us all wrong and redeem even the wildest statements.
Interested in these cases, Redditor TheCheeryStranger recently asked other platform users, "What 'crazy' person in history was right the whole time?" and everyone immediately started sending in their answers.
From Ernest Hemingway talking about the FBI tailing him to Galileo Galilei being trialed by the Church for his heretic claim that the Earth revolves around the sun, here are some of the most interesting ones.
This post may include affiliate links.
Clair Patterson-he was made out to be crazy by giant oil companies bc he tested ice cores in the Arctic and figured out that the amount of lead in the atmosphere, the water, and our bodies was extremely high and caused by leaded gasoline. He petitioned Congress for years to make it illegal to add lead to gasoline, but the corporations kept getting him shut down because they used lead as an anti-knock agent for internal combustion engines. Ironically, lead was causing everyone else to go crazy because it is shaped like a neurotransmitter and blocks receptors causing insanity, similarly to what mercury does, and many employees of the oil companies had gone mad. After decades of battling the oil companies, he finally got his way and lead was removed from gasoline. Since then, the amount of lead in the atmosphere and I’m living things has decreased dramatically. Clair Patterson… a f**king hero.
He also created the first truly “clean room.”
Sinead O’Connor - she was vilified for ripping up a photo of the pope to protest child abuse within the Catholic Church. Spoiler alert - the Catholic Church was covering up child abuse.
Stanislav Petrov. Though we don't see him as crazy, I'm sure his crewmates thought he was. He directly disobeyed Soviet military protocols and prevented a nuclear war.
Rose McGowan was completely ostracized and blacklisted for talking about Weinstein too early.
Tesla. Edison is still credited with the lightbulb. His last words put it into perspective "All these years that I had spent in the service of mankind brought me nothing but insults and humiliation"
The inventor of dialysis, Dr. Willem Kolff. Although it's hard to blame them, haha. He saw people dying of kidney disease and said "Hey, what if we take all of the blood out of your body, clean it, and put it back in?" (Cleaning your blood is the job of your kidneys, and a dialysis machine is basically an artificial kidney, on the *outside* of your body.) It was a wild idea and he started his work during WWII and had to work with basic materials like orange juice cans, sausage skins, and a washing machine. Many of the first patients died, but they were already going to die painfully. Eventually, he ironed the kinks out and started saving lives.
Lisa Bonet. She was vilified for hating Cosby in the 80s. Who’s the villain now?
He didnt like when she was naked in a movie. He had her character denise leave diffrent world because she was pregnabt in real life
Corey Feldman talking about child sex abuse in Hollywood.
John Yudkin. The single scientist who didn't believe the sugar industry's research that demonized fats. Till his death he's adamant that fats weren't the cause of obesity and heart attacks.
Yup, my mum read his book Pure, White and Deadly many years ago. People thought he was a conspiracy nut, because *surely* fat in food leads to fat in arteries. Tell that to the people who live in the Arctic Circle and traditionally eat large amounts of seal blubber. To be honest though, I hate this crusade against sugar we're now having. In the UK everything is packed with artificial sweeteners. I'd rather have real sugar, in small quantities as a treat than eat sweeteners regularly. There's emerging evidence that they do damage to your gut microbiome.
There was a wacko looking guy on Oprah who stopped his vanilla presentation to tell the audience that plastic causes cancer, stop using it to store food and water.
Oprah cut to commercial and whisked him off the show.
Dude was right. BPAs were outed that day, but it took another decade for that info to become public knowledge.
Will Rogers a humorist when he invented the term "trickle-down" economics as a joke stating that this type of economy would just make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
And then we actually implemented it and used the term trickle-down. And Will Rogers was right.
The rent has gone though the roof and our salaries have stagnated and we can't afford "The American Dream" anymore.
The fact anyone voted twice for the administration that implemented trickle-down economics still shocks me, and I was alive for both times Reagan was voted in... And old enough to cry both times, too.
Hemingway talked about the FBI following him prior to his suicide. They thought he was paranoid. Decades later some papers get released, turns out the FBI was following him.
Rutherford B Hayes. Not necessarily viewed as crazy, but largely viewed as a bad or useless president.
"This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations."
Said that in the late 1800's.
He was POTUS 1876-81, after a very nasty election (think: the 2016 of its day). The qoute can be found in "The Diary & Letters" of same, published in the edition I've seen in 1920-something.
During the plague in Moscow there was a priest (or something) DIScouraging people kissing the statue of Maria, as to stop the spreading of the virus.
The poor man was burned alive for blasphemy.
Aww, the good old times where the church had much more power and religious beliefs were more common than nowadays.
Giordano Bruno was (probably) the first European who proposed the possibility that not only was the universe infinite, but stars were not just points of light in the sky; they could be suns with their own planets, and that some of those planets might even host life.
The Catholic Church had him tried for Heresy and had him burned at the stake and his contemporaries though he was completely insane. He had some kooky ideas, but he was absolutely right about the size of the universe and stars being suns with their own planets.
Craig Ferguson having empathy for Britney Spears in his 2007 monologue.
Remember the government accountant in George W Bush’s presidency who said the war in Afghanistan would cost a billion dollars a month and he was fired? Well, he was right. It was 300 million dollars per day for 20 years.
At least former Halliburton CEO, Cheney, got his company no-bid contracts to help rebuild Iraq.
Heinrich Schliemann. He 100% believed that ancient Troy had really existed. So he armed himself with a copy of the Iliad, and actually managed to find and excavate the city. He'd told everyone and their sister that Troy was a real place for 40 years before he found it, and everyone thought he was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Not so much, it turns out.
Martha Mitchell.. She was like part of the reason why it was discovered that Nixon was involved in Watergate. Her husband was part of the Nixon group so she got some inside details. When she wanted to tell the news about the whole scandal, her husband and Nixon men put her in a hotel and restrained her from having any contact with anyone. She was seen as an insane person her husband and Nixon's men even managed to convince the psychiatrists that she was out of her mind.
Actually there's a phenomenon in psychology which was named after her a.k.a the Martha Mitchell Effect
Charles Darwin. The religious outcry against evolution was engineered by his academic rivals more than from religious resistance. But even now, after all that politics is centuries dead, there remain people who categorically resist demonstrable fact because of it.
This should be more commonly known. I didn't learn about the roots of the rejection of evolution until I was in a college level anthropology course. I always assumed it was a religious objection. Just proves that religion isn't qualified to know what it's upset about.
Galileo - he believed the Earth and other planets orbited the Sun, contrary to popular belief that all stars and planets orbited Earth. The Catholic Church called it heresy, and ordered him to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin a trial for his beliefs.
Galileo knew to tread lightly. His colleague, Giordano Bruno, was executed via burning at the stake for believing in heliocentricity.
Rachel Caron found that DDT was weakening the shells of bird eggs and contributing to the decline in the bald eagle population. She faced quite a bit of backlash from publishing her book "Silent Spring" detailing her research on the topic.
Eisenhower. Re: The military–industrial complex
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
And no one talks about Eisenhower's 99% taxation plan on businesses unless they increased wages, offered more benefits, gave payed time off, etc.
Carrie Nation of the Temperance/Prohibition movement
She has been ridiculed and lambasted by history as a kooky, prudish anti-alcohol crusader. But she was actually a diligent progressive activist working through a proto-social justice lens.
Her beef wasn't with alcohol, but rather with distilleries and suppliers flooding small towns with enormous quantities of cheap, low-quality liquor with the explicit intent of turning emotionally devastated WWI veterans into drunkards for profit. (The knock-on effects of that campaign included rampant domestic violence and poverty.)
Gal was working to uplift the most vulnerable people and is only remembered for making a show of smashing bottles.
Anyone who publicly tries to uplift the vulnerable will be made a mockery by the powerful; it's not within their agenda to share power.
All the people that said the NSA/CIA was spying on us for years.
Thanks to edward Snowden we now know that was true and it was so much so that the NSA had built back doors in pretty much every single electronic device that exsists all the way down to the network switch level on cisco switches and the internet backbone through AT&T network hubs. The fact that there wasnt mass revolt after that information was released kinda blew my mind.
I'm likely in a minority but I really don't give any f***s if people want to waste time listening into my daily life/phone/emails etc - all they're going to get is me talking c**p with mates, my husband and my kids, meme wars that go on for months at a time, the insane number of cake decorating videos I watch and my true crime obsession. I don't see some government employed person bored oot their tits seeing the drivel people talk as an invasion of privacy - and if snooping on folks interactions prevents some big disaster like the twin towers then I think it's worth it. And I kinda like the fact I'll mention wanting a new mattress and then getting every ad directed towards mattresses, it reminds me to look for them when I'd likely otherwise forget as my brain is like Swiss cheese
Boltzman spend his life trying to prove his formula but ended up commiting suicide because none of his collegues believed him. Now, his formula is basically the 'amen' in thermodynamics.
Morgan Robertson.
In 1898 he published a story about a ship named the Titan, a fictional ship, that sinks after hitting an iceberg. Allegedly (and I can’t find any proof of this) it was initially dismissed for being too outlandish.
14 years later, the Titanic sinks in an eerily similar fashion. Robertson dismissed all claims of being psychic, and was just familiar with ships of the time and their flaws.
I don't know that guy's name but he basically from 1541-1542 travelled accross south america. The first european to do so. While he was on his journey he said he saw millions of people and large cities , with a lot of life in them , where today is the amazon rainforest.After he had finished his journey he had told the stories of those cities and about a hundred years later when explorers visited the place there was nothing , no cities , no people , just jungle. So they thought he had made all that up. But modern technology has shown that there might have accually been a lot of cities there , and that those people died out with smallpox and all cities were covered by the jungle within the course of 50 years. So basically people thought he was crazy and made everything up but in modern times its proven that he was right all along.
The explorer was Francisco de Orellana. The YouTube link for the BBC documentary, Unnatural Histories, is https://youtu.be/ihvySe6yROE
Dr. Atkins.
When his first book 'The New Diet Revolution' came out, he was mocked and ridiculed for thinking that refined sugars, flour, and starch caused the glycemic index to skyrocket which led to your body storing fat. When he died people thought he died from his own diet.
Keto-acidosis and how you can lose weight by reducing your glycemic index was largely his research.
It was later stolen and copied and called 'The Zone Diet' and 'The Caveman Diet' and 'The Paleo Diet' which were all based on his work.
I think people misunderstood The Atkins Diet, or more accurately, misinterpreted it as "I can eat 7 pounds of bacon per day as long as I don't eat sugar or bread". Thing is, they would lose weight, so they were pleased. They didn't care that they were creating other health problems.
Load More Replies...
I'll catch hell for this but: Atkins is not a great diet. Paleo/keto/whatever you call it, if you get rid of carbs, you *will* get trouble, and ketoacidosis is *not* good for you. Please don't dismiss whole grains and fruit/veg b/c of Atkins. Also, if your glycemic index plummets, it's also bad. But what do I know?....
you won't catch hell from me. I'll upvote you into next Tusday if i could. Scientists and researchers (who are *also* scientists) have published studies on a) longterm effects of ketosis into ketoacidosis (not great for kidneys, liver, and brain), and, b) side-by-side comparisons on maintainability (not yo-yoing after) and study after study puts paleo, Atkins, and similar at the middle-bottom of the pack. winner? mediterranean every time.
Load More Replies...
Everything (almost everything) in moderation with a healthy dose of exercise is likely the best approach. We must also recognize the fact that there are variances, and sometimes to the extremes, due to genetic coding, environment - nurturing, economic conditions, etc. Being on the heavier/lighter side of the scale is not necessarily a bad thing. As long as you can perform your daily activities without a struggle, you should be fine, apart from any medical issues that would/could cause complications.
I know it and am amused that no one today seems to acknowledge his efforts and genius in his diet plans. Keto is just an extension of Dr. Atkins, except you have to count macros and other things. Dr. Atkins suggested additional vitamins and supplements to help you start and maintain ketosis. When he died and his wife sold his diet, it was buried for years before Keto came out. His diet works. It did when I first did it and it does now.
Like the inventor of the Segway, who drove one off a cliff...
Load More Replies...
I have his books (only 2) and he's right! I have lost weight and have never felt better. Now we also have the "keto diet" which is just a copy of what he has been saying all along. Some have said that it's just eating fats and butter and meat and that is total bs. I've never eaten so much salads and veggies :D
People (often deliberately) misconstrue the Atkins Diet as "no-carb" rather than "low-carb." There are plenty of carbs in the Atkins Diet; they're simply carbs that have the best nutritional cost/benefit ratio. More carbs from less-sugary fruits and vegetables; fewer carbs from Doritos, Kool-Aid and Wonder Bread. The typical American diet is a daily overdose of carbs, and the results speak for themselves.
Load More Replies...
Atkins, who I once interviewed in his office, died a few days after after slipping on an icy sidewalk and fracturing his skull. He was given steroids that resulted in him rapidly adding fluid weight. His weight was 210, but the coroner violated the law and revealed that his weight was 242 pounds to the public.
The author makes the common mistake of confusing "ketoacidosis," which is a serious complication of diabetes, and "ketosis," which is the process which occurs when the body does not have enough carbohydrates to use for fuel, and turns to burning stored fat to create ketones, which are used for fuel. The confusion between these two terms caused many people to disparage the Atkins diet.
Starvation ketoacidosis due to prolonged ketosis is a thing though. It's actually a common mistake to think the 2 aren't and can't be related. Ketones are made in diabetics when there's not enough insulin to use the glucose for energy so it has to break down fat.. Ketones are created in people using the keto diet because there aren't enough carbs or sugar to use for energy so it has to break down fat. The body is still producing ketones, just for 2 different reasons. Both lead to ketoacidosis. Both are dangerous.
Load More Replies...
The Caveman diet - or Paleo - is unrelated to Keto and Atkins Diet. Atkins and Keto are carb free (or as much as possible). Paleo is nothing processed, period. If it doesn't come from nature, it's not eaten. And no cultivated plants, like legumes and grains, and no milk.
Paleo is often interpreted to mean All Mean Like Cave Men! BTW, legums and grains did grow wild, that's how we ended up cultivating them. I also notice that Paleo people aren't into things like nuts and berries, which are very present in non-agricultural diets, along with insects. No Paleos I know are eating *that*.
Load More Replies...
I’d be circular and sick all the damn time if I ate grains, rice, soy and corn the way I used to. Over twenty years avoiding that stuff (except for the occasional treat) and I’m much better off than when I started.
It's called ketosis, not keto-acidosis. Keto-acidosis is what type 1 diabetics get, and it's very dangerous. Ketosis is when your body makes ketones to burn fat as fuel which is what Dr. Atkins was writing about.
The original Atkins diet removed 100% of fats from the meals. And yes, a lot of people got sick because people at that time didn't know about essential fats. The next version included essential fats and was very successful.
#30 Ketosis not keto-acidosis! https://www.singlecare.com/blog/ketosis-vs-ketoacidosis/
If you think of the fact that hunter-gatherers actually lived an amazingly healthy life, they ate greens everyday, and occasionally some meat, and they were moving around all day long to procure said food. They dug for roots, and went running after deer and allsorts, and it wasn't until we became lazy with the farm-revolution, that we became fat and got horrible teeth! What you call "diet" was just ordinary food for the hunter-gatherers!
Ketosis is the term for lowering glycemic index. Keto-acidosis is a dangerous condition in diabetics.
All good diets, you may have to stick with one or the other or die fat and early.
Zone, Caveman, and Paleo diets are NOT based on Atkins' work. He isn't the only person in the world to recommend a lower-carb higher-protein diet. Zone is absolutely NOT ketogenic. Paleo and "Caveman" are based on imaginary diets that never really existed, and don't work. Atkins' ketogenic diet DOES work but for most people, not for a prolonged period of time. But it doesn't work as a weight-loss diet, unless you restrict calories, which is counter to some of his initial claims.
We should recognize that white carbs are largely devoid of nutrition. And they muck around with our blood sugar levels. Which causes weight gain.
He copied the Mayo Clinic Diet and Keto-acidosis still destroys internal organs such as the liver and kidney.
a whatever diet is not helpful to stay with your lost pounds. instead of dieting, to change eating habits, longtime, feels better for me. (no / less sugar, less meat, good oils like rape/oliveoil, (polyunsaturated oils) less eg/milk and much of salads and fresh vegetables.
The glycemic index is the system by which numeric values are assigned to foods to indicate how they affect your blood sugar level. "Blood sugar level" is the term you're looking for.
Shame I see a whole foods plant based person is getting downvoted below. I guess that's just the usual animosity towards people who advocate notoriously preachy life choices. As the joke goes, "a vegan walks into a bar. How do you know? S/he tells you immediately." Swap "vegan" with "baptist", "crossfitter", or whoever else is preachy. Anyway. I find in my country the Atkins people are super preachy as well. My issue is with animal cruelty. If you are comfortable eating tons of meat and have a pet, I think you're a hypocrite. Go watch "whale wars" on south park. They make the point better than I do. Personally, I eat whatever junk I want to and I have a BMI of 25, about 140lbs/70kg. No special diet, just moderation.
My guess is the animosity comes from the cocky attitude oozing from their comment. They have the inflection of the preachyness you spoke of...
Load More Replies... The effectiveness of the Keto diet has been shown but not consistently proven in research, however the health implications have been proven lots of times. Keto-acidosis literally means an uncontrolled overproduction of ketone bodies, molecules that are produced when the liver starts breaking down fats which can then be used by the brain for energy. Ketoacidosis causes metabolic acidosis, which is a serious electrolyte disorder. All the other exclusive diets such as the paleo diet receive similar scrutiny.
God, I remember when the Atkins diet was popular. Does that make me old?
it still is. It's had a resurgence. Most wealthy people in south africa are on it.
Load More Replies...
He was crazy, and he was wrong, and he didn't know what he was talking about. The "keto diet" does not cause keto-acidosis because if it did, you would die. Period.
But all this is very bad for your health, so please it is totally ok to ridicule him! You will not tell me that you believe in this nonsense? It is scientifically proven that it is not healthy and not a good way to eat!
Yes and no. Sugar and processed carbohydrates are bad for you. Whole grains and other forms of carbohydrates that have fiber and nutrients that come along with them are healthy. Excess fat and yes, even protein have negative health effects.The Atkin's Diet, which eschews ALL carbohydrates but gives you free rein to eat all that fat and protein you want is not healthy, its a recipe for kidney disease, clogged arteries, and cancer.
Agree. I did adkins back in the day and it was NO carbs. And that’s not healthy. You need fiber. It’s more about controlling carbs than eliminating them. “Unless you have a medical condition that requires ketosis- [maybe epilepsy?])
Load More Replies... How does that vindicate him? Those other diets are equally unhealthy.
I think vindicated as in he was right about refined sugar and starch. The low fat revolution in the 80s caused most food manufacturers to replace good fats and bad with sugar. Everything else was already loaded up with it by then.
Load More Replies...
Note: this post originally had 44 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I'm surprised Johnny Rotten isn't on the list. Banned by the BBC in 1978 for calling out Jimmy Saville as a predator.
Yeah, there's even an audio recording of him calling Jimmy out (https://boingboing.net/2022/04/12/watch-johnny-rotten-call-out-jimmy-savile-decades-before-netflix.html), but the BBC refused to air it back then. I couldn't stand the man (Johnny) when he was with the Pistols and he's still a bit of the old "mad lad", but his recent interviews and comments have been spot-on.
Load More Replies...
Thor Heyerdahl. That guy said that it is completely possible to build a raft in South America (I think it was in Peru) and use it to sail to Philiphines. Many experts didn't believe him, so he made a party of six or seven guys, built the raft and made the journey.
Many more scientists. On top of my head, Barbara McClintock, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, Ignaz Semmelweis (especially Ignaz Semmelweis), Frances Oldham Kelsey and likely many more. Some of them were proven right in their lifetime and received high honors, some of them didn't live to see fruits of their labour.
Semmelweis! I was trying to remember his name. Yes, he should have been up there.
Load More Replies...
I'm waiting for the time that John Anthony West is validated about his findings on the age of the Pyramids and The Sphinx.- 14,000 years. Of course people called him crazy, but his research is based on Geology, not Archeology. As I see it, and my Geology prof agreed, Geology is an exact science. Archeology is interpretive, and at times, makes things either "fit", or disappear. Interesting dilemma.
Just because you're right doesn't mean you aren't crazy. And some of these people may not have been crazy, but neither were they right.
Came here to say the similar, a handful of these people were considered crazy anyway, and were just considered more crazy or the crazy label was (very very wrongly) weaponised against them, as a result of their beliefs or statements, despite them being correct. Sadly all too common in Hollywood especially, and far too effective against women.
Load More Replies...
It's sad how many of these people were negatively affected by religion and religious views of others. And it's still happening. It's like we never learn to stop allowing religion to dictate our government or people's lives just in general.
Please change keto-acidosis to ketosis. They are NOT the same thing. Keto-acidosis is life threatening.
Alfred Wegener was thought to be crazy when he presented his theory on continental drift
Denying continental drift always blew my mind. What, did europe and north america both independently evolve foxes and bears from the first single-celled organisms? Clearly the continents were joined for most of earth's history. I remember clearly as a 5 year old in kindergarten looking at a globe of earth and saying "hey I see south america fits against africa". It's so obvious it's painful.
Load More Replies...
Actually, yes. The original Salk vaccine needed boosters, and so did the smallpox vaccine.
Load More Replies...
I'm surprised Johnny Rotten isn't on the list. Banned by the BBC in 1978 for calling out Jimmy Saville as a predator.
Yeah, there's even an audio recording of him calling Jimmy out (https://boingboing.net/2022/04/12/watch-johnny-rotten-call-out-jimmy-savile-decades-before-netflix.html), but the BBC refused to air it back then. I couldn't stand the man (Johnny) when he was with the Pistols and he's still a bit of the old "mad lad", but his recent interviews and comments have been spot-on.
Load More Replies... Thor Heyerdahl. That guy said that it is completely possible to build a raft in South America (I think it was in Peru) and use it to sail to Philiphines. Many experts didn't believe him, so he made a party of six or seven guys, built the raft and made the journey.
Many more scientists. On top of my head, Barbara McClintock, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, Ignaz Semmelweis (especially Ignaz Semmelweis), Frances Oldham Kelsey and likely many more. Some of them were proven right in their lifetime and received high honors, some of them didn't live to see fruits of their labour.
Semmelweis! I was trying to remember his name. Yes, he should have been up there.
Load More Replies... I'm waiting for the time that John Anthony West is validated about his findings on the age of the Pyramids and The Sphinx.- 14,000 years. Of course people called him crazy, but his research is based on Geology, not Archeology. As I see it, and my Geology prof agreed, Geology is an exact science. Archeology is interpretive, and at times, makes things either "fit", or disappear. Interesting dilemma.
Just because you're right doesn't mean you aren't crazy. And some of these people may not have been crazy, but neither were they right.
Came here to say the similar, a handful of these people were considered crazy anyway, and were just considered more crazy or the crazy label was (very very wrongly) weaponised against them, as a result of their beliefs or statements, despite them being correct. Sadly all too common in Hollywood especially, and far too effective against women.
Load More Replies... It's sad how many of these people were negatively affected by religion and religious views of others. And it's still happening. It's like we never learn to stop allowing religion to dictate our government or people's lives just in general.
Please change keto-acidosis to ketosis. They are NOT the same thing. Keto-acidosis is life threatening.
Alfred Wegener was thought to be crazy when he presented his theory on continental drift
Denying continental drift always blew my mind. What, did europe and north america both independently evolve foxes and bears from the first single-celled organisms? Clearly the continents were joined for most of earth's history. I remember clearly as a 5 year old in kindergarten looking at a globe of earth and saying "hey I see south america fits against africa". It's so obvious it's painful.
Load More Replies... Actually, yes. The original Salk vaccine needed boosters, and so did the smallpox vaccine.
Load More Replies...