Scientists once thought illness was caused by “ miasmas ,” foul vapors that drifted through the air. For centuries, they were certain that the sun rotated around the Earth. Until the 1950s, they believed lobotomies were the best way to treat mental illness.  Why did we stop believing these things? In each case, skeptics used the scientific method to produce data that disproved the incumbent theory. They hypothesized, experimented, observed, analyzed, iterated, and then published the results,