The Mars Canals And Changes Of Paradigms

Interesting:

… Planetary observers with superior telescopes, too, were subjected to the scorn of those astronomers of the time who had given way to the "standard paradigm", existing for some decades, that the vague markings of Mars, barely seen when the planet was at closest opposition every few years, were "linear", "doubled", and possibly indicative of artificial constructions. It was also widely asserted, and believed, that the Martian surface was rich with vegetation, which grew and subsided with the seasons. These opinions had become almost the norm by the time that Lick astronomers, such as Barnard, turned the mighty Clark 36" refractor telescope, then the world's largest, onto the planet.

But, in the early 1890s Barnard beheld -- to his amazement -- not a fine working of "canals" (or channels, as they would have been properly translated from the Italian) but a plethora of natural surface details: huge gullies, chasms, craters, and formations of a rocky terrain. I once held in my own hand Barnard's drawing, about 5 inches in diameter, made at the eyepiece, which he copied to his astronomical mentor Simon Newcomb, with the report that in clearest seeing, he saw NO "canals" but only ordinary surface details in such profusion as to overwhelm the senses. Barnard was, in fact, so intimidated by Percival Lowell and William H. Pickering at Flagstaff's renowned Lowell Observatory -- founded to study Mars -- that he felt could not publish his "anomalous" observations, so sure were the users of smaller telescopes that "canals" and forests were being accurately spotted. Barnard, who had only a bachelor's degree in mathematics (at the time a junior observer at Lick) felt that he could not sustain the damage to his reputation that would be done by the expected denunciations that would surely emerge from the disputatious and condescending Pickering and Lowell.

This reminds me of the current state of climate science, where people rather hide their "anomalous" results, for fear of denunciations from the "hockey team" – because the "standard paradigm" is that human emissions of CO2 are a catastrophe, and nothing but a catastrophe.