[brabel]

> Eventually it turned out that the Western scientists didn’t really have any hard evidence for that belief.

Regardless of whether this particular "belief" was actually held by anyone (it probably wasn't as others point out), science is fully based on evidence. If what you say is actually true, what those people claiming that were doing was not science by definition. You cannot claim something which you can't back up with data and plenty of evidence and call what you're doing science.