I'm really skeptical of the idea of "dead ideas". This was recently discussed on the IRC, in the context of Eugenics. Embryo selection and soon direct genetic modification will be possible. But eugenics has a really bad reputation because it's associated with Nazism. "It's been tried!" It's now one of those dead ideas.

Another example might be messing with the environment. Including eliminating mosquito's or engineering the climate to lessen the damage of climate change. "It's been tried!" After all there are many examples of humans interfering with the environment and screwing it up.

Nuclear power is basically a taboo issue because a few previous generation plants have failed in the past. New ones might be much safer, but it doesn't matter, the subject is off the table.

In general there are very few ideas which "have been proven false by incontrovertible evidence". The real world is complex and has a lot of variables, and drawing strong conclusions from single historical examples is not rational. Having "dead ideas" is not a desirable thing.

The article's main beef seems to be with populist politicians. Which I think we can all agree are terrible. Whether or not they happen to support dead ideas is really irrelevant.

Then when the article gets to politicians supporting dead ideas, the examples they give are not dead at all. Not that they are correct, just that they are far from "definitely proven wrong" like nuclear power. E.g. the example of a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants. Now I think you can dispute this morally, but how is this a thing that has been tried and failed before? When has it been tried before, and how did it fail? The article certainly doesn't provide any citations. The other examples are similarly weak and weakly argued.