[getoffmycase]

Scientists should not shut out other ideas for two decades even though there were serious challenges to the hypothesis the whole time. Part of being a good scientist is admitting your chosen hypothesis isn’t correct and that it’s time to create a new theory based on the experimental evidence available. Otherwise, it’s just a research based cult.

[nathan_compton]

This almost never happens, to my knowledge. Most fields have people pursuing alternative hypotheses even when one thing is in vogue. For example, in the case of Alzheimer's Disease there were and are a lot of other threads of research and I would be that your typical AD scientist would have had a good grasp of many of them regardless of the research they were focusing on.

https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/3223/what-altern...