Farmer: In world of science, data reign supreme

Sometimes a really silly idea turns out to be a very good one.

Americans like to operate under the guiding principle of majority rule. We often are surprised to learn that in the sciences, the majority does not always rule.

Often, successful ideas are driven forward by the minority.

Sometimes, by a minority of one.

One of the most important thinkers of the 20th century faced rejection, even ridicule, from his colleagues for having the audacity to put forth a controversial idea.

In 1912, a 32-year-old German named Alfred Wegener had the audacity to suggest that rather than remaining in their fixed positions, the continents of Earth were actually moving, drifting and bumping together like giant ice slabs on a thawing river.

Wegener's idea of "continental drift" was built on a series of keen observations and insightful connections. He was intrigued by how the continents could be fit together almost like a giant jig-saw puzzle. Not only did the east coast of South America fit nicely into the western cleft of Africa, but the geological features of both suggested they were once a single giant continent.

Wegener's controversial idea was met largely with skepticism and derision. A 1925 meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists organized a symposium dedicated to the ridicule of continental drift. When he died at age 50, Wegener still lacked a mechanism by which his model of floating continents could be validated. Decades after his death, noted scientists still wrote lengthy diatribes against Wegener's theory.

It wasn't until the 1950s, when information about the Earth's magnetic past came to light, that Wegener's idea began to gain support. Virtually every piece of evidence in the past 60 years, from the discovery of great rift valleys in the ocean's depths to deep-sea vents, has supported Wegener's hypothesis. Today, the idea of continental drift, based on the theory of plate tectonics, is completely accepted. Every geology textbook contains a description of how the giant plates of the Earth's crust are floating on a sea of molten rock and moving to create