I know Argumentum ad populum does not work, and I know Arguments from authority do not work, but perhaps they can be combined into something more potent:
Can anyone recall a hypothesis that had been supported by a significant subset of the lay population, consistently rejected by the scientific elites, and turned out to be correct?
It seems belief in creationism has this structure. the lower you go in education level, the more common the belief. I wonder whether this alone can be used as evidence against this 'theory' and others like it.
That there's a hereditary component to schizophrenia.
This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.
Part 2