5 Ignored People that were Actually Right

Floating a new idea among large masses of people is an incredibly difficult job, particularly if it is against the personal interests of the majority or collide with their long-held beliefs. History has seen quite a lot of these ignored people who were deprived of the appreciation they deserved on the basis of these reasons. In addition to that, many of them were punished (mentally as well as physically) for being outspoken. Following is a list of 5 ignored people who were disregarded despite being completely right about certain issues.

Allan McDonald

In the 1980s, Allan McDonald was serving as the Director of the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Motor Project for Morton Thiokol, the engineering company that was preparing the Challenger shuttle for its 10^th mission. He refused to sign the launch recommendations because he believed that the spacecraft is not good enough to make the journey. Despite his concerns, the officials of NASA were not willing to accept any theory without hard data and forced the engineering company to continue the mission. Following the refusal of McDonald, his boss signed the launch recommendation. Later on, the shuttle exploded merely a minute into the flight to prove that he was right about the incapability of Challenger.

Dusan Popov

Popov was a Serbian agent who worked for both the Abwehr and MI6 during World War II. He informed the authorities at FBI to expect an attack on Pearl Harbor but they overlooked that idea on the basis of Popov’s attitude (drinker, womanizer, and gambler). According to reports, the US military never received this information because J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI Chief of the time, was not very fond of Popov. Hoover continued to cover-up the disaster until 1972 when all the relevant documents were declassified by the British Intelligence. You can get all the details about the Pearl Harbor attack here.

John Lydon

Probably the most controversial of all the ignored people in the list, Johnny Rotten was the Lead Singer for the Sex Pistols. He was generally quite outspoken and expressed his views openly but the interview that cost him a ban from the BBC (according to him) was taken in 1978. In that particular show, he talked about his intentions of killing Jimmy Savile, a famous TV and radio presenter who enjoyed a long, illustrious career in this field. Lydon mentioned that Savile molested hundreds of children during his career and it is an open secret but no one has the permission to reveal this information. His claims were proved absolutely correct, almost 35 years later, when Savile was declared as one of the most prolific sex offenders of Britain.   

Clair Cameron Patterson

This American Geochemist led a lifetime campaign against lead contamination. He realized the severity of the situation when he compared the lead levels of modern Americans with Peruvian skeletons (nearly 1600 years old at that time). Basically, Patterson developed a technique called ‘Uranium-Lead Dating’ that could calculate the age of the Earth, much more accurately. During this study, he found that humans are not only poisoning the planet but also themselves with lead. Consequently, he raised a voice against the use of TEL (tetraethyl lead) in gasoline.

This idea didn’t go well with a lot of influential people who have invested millions of dollars in this industry. Robert Kehoe, a Toxicologist who worked as a Medical Advisor for the Ethyl Corporation, was the main advocate against Patterson’s claims. Although he did manage to convince the authorities about the safety of TEL in the late 1920s, Patterson proved to be the ultimate winner as TEL was banned altogether in 1990.

William Coley

Also called the ‘Father of Immunotherapy’, William Coley was the first man to present the idea of purposely infecting patients with disease in order to cure cancer. Coley’s claims didn’t go well with the medical world of the time (partly because of the unpredictable reaction of the patients after getting infected). Due to the lack of research in the field of medicine (at that time), Coley didn’t have the knowledge of the relationship between cancer and microorganisms so he had to try a total of 13 different mixtures to his patients. While doing that, he was also able to develop a mixture of Streptococcus pyogenes and Serratia marcescens, which are still known as the Coley’s toxins. After all the opposition, the American Medical Association finally accepted the cure in 1935.