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The Practice of Bloodletting in New Delhi presented by National Geographic of the populace of Delhi, India, patients a day seek treatment at Rahat Open Surgery, where they  used razor blade to draw blood.  The still believe the patient blood is bad which is causing the extreme pain, sickeness or diease. Its appalling and a bit distubing to watch the film to see the patients go through these extreme treatments of this ancestral method. However, patients trully believe this practice really helps them - even though they have to go daily for treatment. This is Ideological support  since one of the practinioers says his father and grandfather did this for a long time and of course, anicent wisedom since this practice is over 2000 years old before modern science and says it works. I also think there a bit of confirmation bias that may have to do with the elements of the culture stanards and values and Confusion of correlation with causation since patients have to go daily for bloodletting, that they think its working for them ( if they did not go for a week, would the reaction/thoughts be different), could they realize that they just want it to work for they dont feel uncomfortable or be in pain anymore.

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WATCH: The Practice of Bloodletting in New Delhi | National Geographic

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A TedTalk of Annie Murphy Paul: What we learn before we're born of maternal imprinting or maternal impression of powerful mental or physical action working on the mother’s mind produces an impression on the child in her womb that causes them to be flawed. Anne talks about how the fetus before fully a human is learning in the womb of their mother. Some of the examples she told where the babie in the womb can hear the mother voice at 4 months and can recognize at nine months, learning language, can taste and smell food, remember and prefer, taught of the culture they are being brought in, emotions and influences, corporate into body- flesh and blood,

how mothers teach their children before they are born. While the video was interesting, the whole time, it was proof of verbosity - too much information and not at all giving any real statistics or qoute on qoute from scienctist, she would mention " in a study" , they found babys can recongize food the mother enjoy. Well, how do they know that? what observation or study or interview ? I was trying to figure out where she gotten the information since it was unclear. She also mention that how the mother phyiscal, mental or emotions will effect the babie will effect when the baby is born , even though, in cases the outcome is different. Just because a mother has depression, doesnt mean the baby may be depressed - it depends how the nurture and nature, not only the mother doing.

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Pop quiz: When does learning begin? Answer: Before we are born. Science writer Annie Murphy Paul talks through new research that shows how much we learn in the womb -- from the lilt of our native language to our soon-to-be-favorite foods.

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The is an image of alchemy. The image has a alchemist standing with the signficant moon and sun. Alchemy is a philosophical and prescientific tradition practiced throughout Europe, Egypt and Asia. Alchemist goals were to create pure and create perfect objects such as the elixir of life, philosopher’s stone and changing silver to gold and more. Alchemy is very vast from labs experiments, theories to mythology, magic and spiritually. Alchemy had become significant in academic study for historians for arthrology, psychology and sociology aspects of western culture. There is a large spectrum of scepticism of alchemy – the ones who believe in the science aspect and those who belief in the spiritual and magical part. Either way, this is a ancient wisdom and Ideological support since this may be done the labs, the results are un realistic and support and possibly unethical and a lot of just scholars/monks/priests looking for the impossible and the unexplained.

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Image #2 is a doctor drawing blood from a patient known as “Bloodletting “the practice of withdrawing blood from a patient to cure all types of sicknesses and diseases.  This was based off a body contained four humours (blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm) and when one of the humors is unbalanced, the cure was bleeding people. Though this was practice for almost 2000 years (around Egypt – Greece glory), it declines during the 18 centuries when modern science prospered. However, still today, bloodletting is still being used a treatment. This method is a red flag of ancient wisdom. I feel that this is a dangerous time of method to cure since the physician is drawing a large sum of blood out of patient, I feel it would contribute more to that disease or sickness. Also, this method was used on George Washington when he had a cold and less in a few days died from the speculation of excessive blood loss. In my opinion, I would never consider this practice if I had a cold or headache. I feel this way is more dangerous and un hygienic and unsafe. The could also be a Natural red flag, since many people during the time is was prospering, may think this was natural way to restore the four humors since it’s just cutting into a vein to draw blood out.

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The first image is one of the 18th century science method called phlogiston by Johann Joachim Becher – an odourless powder substance that would be suggested of a fifth metal to Aristotle four elements – Water, Fire, Earth and Air. What is suggested is that all metals including coal and fire contained phlogiston and when the chemical reacts to another it transforms into a metal oxide then into a white powder. This is a red flag because the conclusions were purely based on the qualitative observations and not quantitative observations. Later this method was decline due to modern science.  Later scientists found that the metal oxide was greater mass than of that metal and found a way to remove mercury from the metal without using phlogiston and since Becher could not prove with quantitative observation of the experiment and theory, was not accepted to all scientists. A red flag is ancient wisdom and that the fact that Becher did not based on quantitates observation and did not meet with the experiments and theory correctly. defa�A��*,q

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This video debunks the theory that all humans are born as a blank slate and they have formed their personalities through outside influences. Sure, outside influences have a major in packed one ones opinions and personality, but even as babies each child has a different personality. I believe that there are many outstanding red flags to this theory such as confusion of correlation with causation. As people are heavily influenced by their surroundings, that could be seen as a correlation but does not mean it is proof for this subject. There is also appeal to authority as people with authority stated we are born as blank slates people didn’t doubt and believed the experts to have a better knowledge.

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Steven Pinker: Human nature and the blank slate

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This website also gives 10 scientific theories that were later debunked, my favorite being phrenology. The thought that the shape of the skull could explain a human's strengths and weaknesses. It is now considered a pseudoscience. This theory in particular, reminds me of the red flag confusion of correlation with causation. Seeing a correlation can confuse ones thoughts into believing that their theory is one with scientific proof.

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The most genuine merit of science is probably its readiness to admit its mistakes (usually!). The theories in science are always being reconsidered and scrutinized. Modern research often rejects old ideas, hoaxes and myths.

Today's post on our Science Blog will discuss ten of the most popular and influential scientific discoveries that were based on dubious data, and were consequently proven wrong, debunked and replaced with more reliable and logical modern theories.

1- Fleischmann-Pons's Nuclear Fusion

Cold fusion is a supposed kind of nuclear reaction that would occur at relatively low temperatures compared with hot fusion. As a new type of nuclear reaction, it gained much popularity after reports in 1989 by famous electrochemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann. The craze about cold fusion became weaker as other scientists, after trying to repeat the experiment, failed to get similar results.

2- Phrenology

Now widely considered as a pseudoscience, phrenology was the study of the shape of skull as indicative of the strengths of different faculties. Modern scientific research wiped it out by proving that personality traits could not be traced to specific portions of the brain.

3- The Blank Slate

The Blank Slate theory (or Tabula rasa), widely popularized by John Locke in 1689, proposed that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. Modern research suggests that genes and other family traits inherited from birth, along with innate instincts of course, also play a very important role.

4- Luminiferous Aether

The aether (or ether) was a mysterious substance that was thought to transmit light through the universe. The idea of a luminiferous aether was debunked as experiments in the diffraction and refraction of light, and later Einstein's special theory of relativity, came along and entirely revolutionized physics.

5- Einstein's Static (or Stationary) Universe

A static universe, also called a "stationary" or "Einstein" universe, was a model proposed by Albert Einstein in 1917. It was problematic from the beginning. Edwin Hubble's discovery of the relationship between red shift obliterated it by completely demonstrating that the universe is constantly expanding.

6- Martian Canals

The Martian canals were a network of gullies and ravines that some 19th century scientists erroneously thought to exist on Mars. First detected in 1877 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, modern telescopes and imaging technology completely debunked the myth. The "canals" were actually found to be a mere optical illusion.

7- Phlogiston Theory

First postulated in 1667 by German physician Johann Joachim Becher, Phlogiston Theory is an obsolete scientific theory regarding the existence of "phlogiston", a fire-like element, which was contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. The theory tried to explain burning processes such as combustion and the rusting of metals, which are now jointly termed as "oxidation".

8- The Expanding or Growing Earth

The Expanding Earth or Growing Earth is a hypothesis suggesting that the position and relative movement of continents is dependent on the volume of the Earth increasing. Modern science has turned down any expansion or contraction of the Earth.

9- Discovery of the Planet Vulcan

A small planet that was supposed to exist in an orbit between Mercury and the Sun, French mathematician Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier coined the name "Vulcan" while trying to explain the nature of Mercury's orbit. No such planet was ever discovered, while the orbit of Mercury was explained in detail by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.

10- Spontaneous (or Equivocal) Generation

Spontaneous generation or equivocal generation is an obsolete principle concerning the origin of life from inanimate matter. The hypothesis was brought out by Aristotle who advocated the work of earlier natural philosophers. It was proven wrong in the 19th century by the experiments of Louis Pasteur, drawing influence from Francesco Redi who was an early proponent of germ theory and cell theory.

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10 Most Famous Scientific Theories That Were Later Debunked

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The most genuine merit of science is probably its readiness to admit its mistakes (usually!). The theories in science are always being reconsidered and scrutinized. Modern research often rejects old ideas, hoaxes and myths. Today's post on our Science Blog will discuss ten of the most popular and influential scientific

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This website states 9 popular wrong scientific theories. The tenth one stating that science never believed the earth to be flat. This site held many scientific beliefs that I never knew about such as miasmatic theory of disease. It’s the belief that people caught diseases through “bad air”. “Bad air” being described as “…mist filled with particles from decomposed matter that caused illnesses.” This belief reminds me of the red flag appeal to authority. As all these beliefs have in common, they were thought to have science to back it up. Giving the illusion that because a scientist or someone they considered smarter/ high authorised then them, proved this theory the public believed it to be correct.

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One of the very best things about science is that the discipline is self-correcting. A scientist makes a set of observations about nature, and then devises a theory to fit those observations.

Other scientists then test the theory, and if it withstands scrutiny it becomes widely accepted. At any point in the future, if contravening evidence emerges, the original theory is discarded. At its essence, and though in practice it's more messy, this is how science works.

Needless to say there have been a lot of theories discarded along the way. The following represents my best efforts to select the 10 most spectacularly wrong scientific theories.

To qualify for the list, a large number of scientists at any given time must have subscribed to the particular theory before it was eventually discarded. Thus a long list of pseudoscientific ideas, crackpot though they might be, didn't make the list.

1. Geocentric universe: The concept that the Earth was at the center of the universe dates back to at least 600 B.C. with Greek philosophers who proposed cosmologies of the Sun, Moon and other heavenly bodies orbiting the Earth. The most famous contortion of the system was Ptolemy's epicycles to explain the retrograde motion of Mars. This is a prime example of fitting scientific evidence into preconceived notions. The theory was disproven with the publication of Nicholas Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543.

2. Miasmatic theory of disease: This theory holds that diseases such as cholera, chlamydia or the Black Death were caused by a miasma (ancient Greek: "pollution"), a noxious form of "bad air". This concept was not disposed of until the late 1800s, with the rise of the germ theory of disease. Miasma was considered to be a poisonous vapor or mist filled with particles from decomposed matter that caused illnesses. It was identifiable by its foul smell.

3. Luminiferous aether: Assumed to exist for much of the 19th century, the theory held that a "medium" of aether pervaded the universe through which light could propagate. The celebrated Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887 was the first to provide hard evidence that aether did not exist, and the theory lost all popularity among scientists by the

1920s. A photo of the aether appears below.

4. Stress theory of ulcers: As peptic ulcers became more common in the 20th century, doctors increasingly linked them to the stress of modern life. Medical advice during the latter half of the 20th century was, essentially, for patients to take antacids and modify their lifestyle. In the 1980s Australian clinical researcher Barry Marshal discovered that the bacterium H. pylori caused peptic ulcer disease, leading him to win a Nobel Prize in 2005.

5. Immovable continents: Prior to the middle of the 20th century scientists believed the Earth's continents were stable and did not move. This began to change in 1912 with Alfred Wegener's formulation of the continental drift theory, and later and more properly the elucidation of plate tectonics during the 1950s and 1960s.

6. Phlogiston: Arising in the mid-17th century, physicians conjured up the existence of a fire-like element called "phlogiston", which was contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. Charcoal, for example, left little residue upon burning because it is nearly pure phlogiston. Experiments in the mid-1700s led chemists to conclude the theory was false, giving birth to the field of modern chemistry.

7. The "four humours" theory of human physiology: From Hippocrates onward, the humoral theory was adopted by Greek, Roman and Islamic physicians, and became the most commonly held view of the human body among European physicians until the advent of modern medical research in the 19th century. The four humours of Hippocratic medicine were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood.

8. Static universe: Prior to the observations made by astronomer Edwin Hubble during 1920s, scientists believed the universe was static, neither expanding nor contracting. Hubble found that distant objects in the universe were moving more quickly away than nearby ones. Very recently, in 1999, scientists unexpectedly found that not only was the universe expanding, but its expansion was accelerating.

9. A young Earth: In the mid-1800s many scientists, including Lord Kelvin, believed the Earth to be just 20 million to 40 million years old. It was around that time that geologists such as Charles Lyell began to believe that the Earth was much older, and this conformed to the views of biologists such as Charles Darwin, who needed a much older Earth for evolution to unfold. It wasn't until the middle of the 20th century that scientists came to the accepted conclusion today that the Earth is about 4.55 billion years old.

10. The Earth is flat. Actually, this one doesn't belong on the list but I put it here to prove a point. While there's a popular belief that "flat earth" was somehow a widely held "scientific" idea, Greeks such as Aristotle knew the Earth was round, as did Thomas Aquinas. In short, most scholarship suggests learned men and women from the dawn of antiquity knew the Earth was round. So science gets a pass on this one.

That's my list. What did I miss?

NOTE: This blog entry was inspired by a question posed and the responses of scientists to it.

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The top 10 most spectacularly wrong widely held scientific theories

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One of the very best things about science is that the discipline is self-correcting. A scientist makes a set of observations about nature, and then devises a theory to fit those observations. Other scientists then test the theory, and if it withstands scrutiny it becomes widely accepted.

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This website goes over 10 different scientific beliefs that people once believed were true. Such as alchemy in a way it did contribute to science now but it being considered a form of magic sets a red flag such as the mystical energy one. As it states on this website "...true science caused the death of alchemy which could not stand up to the rigorous testing of its pseudoscience."

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Science fills us all with great wonder and it has done so for generations, but there have been an incredible number of "scientific discoveries" which were later found to be completely false. This list looks at ten of the more fascinating cases of scientific falsehoods from history.

"Rain Follows the Plow" is the name given to a climatology concept which is now completely debunked. The theory said that human settlement caused a permanent increase in rainfall - thus enabling man to move to areas previously considered arid. It is this 19th century theory that brought about the settlement of the Great Plains (previously known as the Great American Desert), and parts of South Australia. The theory was eventually refuted by climatologists, and in the settled areas of South Australia, drought brought an end to the attempted settlements.

This strange theory has a relatively normal name, but rest assured, the concept is far from it. Hans Hörbiger (pictured above), an Austrian engineer and inventor received a vision in 1894 which told him that ice was the substance of all basic substances and had created the ice moons, ice planets, and a "global ether". He said "I knew that Newton had been wrong and that the sun's gravitational pull ceases to exist at three times the distance of Neptune[.]" Unbelievably this theory got a great deal of support. One of the strongest supporters of the concept was Houston Stewart Chamberlain (British born posthumous son-in-law of composer Richard Wagner) who went on to become one of the leading theorists behind the development of the Nazi Party in Germany.

Alchemy has its roots (in the Western world) in Ancient Egypt where it combined with metallurgy in a form of early science. The Egyptian alchemists discovered the formulas for making mortar, glass, and cosmetics. From Egypt it eventually spread to the rest of the Ancient world and led to modern alchemy in which men would try to turn metals into gold, to conjure up genies, and perform all manner of bizarre not-so-science-like activities. While it has contributed in some ways to modern science, the discipline of true science caused the death of alchemy which could not stand up to the rigorous testing of its pseudoscience.

From the 16th century, European experts in geography were convinced that California was an island separate from the North American mainland. Maps of the time show a large island on the left of the land mass and California continued to appear this way even into the 18th century. There was at the time also a rumor that California was an earthly paradise like the Garden of Eden or Atlantis. A romance novel from 1510 describes it thus:

Know, that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise; and it is peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they live in the manner of Amazons. - Las Sergas de Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo

The matter was finally put to rest indisputably on the 1774-1776 expeditions of Juan Bautista de Anza. Interestingly, it is likely that within 25 million years, Baja California and part of Southern California really will separate from North America due to tectonic plate movement.

Geocentricity is the concept which states that the earth is the center of the Universe and that all other objects move around it. The view was universally embraced in Ancient Greece and very similar ideas were held in Ancient China. The idea was supported by the fact that the sun, stars, and planets appear to revolve around Earth, and the physical perception that the Earth is stable and not moving. This was combined with the belief that the earth was a sphere; belief in a flat earth was well gone by the 3rd century BC. The geocentric model was eventually displaced with the work of of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler in the 16th Century.

In classical antiquity right up to modern times, it was believed that the body contained four humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. It was believed that the right balance of these four humors made a person healthy but an excess or decrease in any one of these would cause illness. Because of this belief, treatments of sickness would include bloodletting, purges, and emetics. Occasionally a mixture of herbs would be used to restore the balance. The humors were also applied to foods - for example wine was choleric (yellow bile). This classification still exists today to some extent, as we refer to some foods as "hot" and others as "dry". The concept of humors was not replaced until 1858 when Rudolf Virchow published theories of cellular pathology.

Vitalism states that the functions of living things are controlled by a "vital force" and not biophysical means. Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies - and it has ties to the four humors. It is sometimes referred to as a "life spark" and even as the soul. In the Eastern traditions it is essentially the same thing as "qi" or "chi", which is heavily tied in to oriental medicinal methods. The concept is (as can be expected) completely rejected by most mainstream scientists. In 1967, Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, stated "And so to those of you who may be vitalists I would make this prophecy: what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow."

Maternal Impression is an old belief that a mother's thoughts while pregnant can impart special characteristics on the child in her womb. For many years this idea was used to explain congenital disorders and birth defects. Maternal Impression was used to explain the disorder suffered by the Elephant Man: it was suggested that his mother was frightened by an elephant while she was pregnant with him - thereby imprinting the memory of an elephant on her child. Depression was also explained in this manner. If a mother had moments of strong sadness during pregnancy, it was believed that her child would ultimately suffer from depression in later life. Genetic theory caused the almost complete eradication of this belief in the 20th century.

The theory of phlogiston dates to 1667 when Johann Joachim Becher (a German physicist) suggested that there was a fifth element (phlogiston) to go with the four classical elements (Earth, Water, Air, Fire) which was contained within objects that could burn. It was believed that when an object burned, it released its phlogiston (an element without taste, mass, odor or color) and left behind a powdery substance called calx (what we now know to be oxide). Objects that burned in air were considered to be rich in phlogiston and the fact that a fire burned out when oxygen was removed was seen as proof that oxygen could only absorb a limited amount of the substance. This theory also led to the idea that the human need to breathe had a sole function which was to remove phlogiston from the body. The entire concept was superseded by Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier's discovery that combustion could only occur with the help of a gas such as oxygen.

Before microscopes and theories of cells and germs, man had other ideas about the creation of living things. He bizarrely believed that life arose from inanimate matter (for example, maggots come spontaneously from rotting meat). Proponents of this view (virtually everyone) used the Bible as a source of evidence, due to the fact that God made man from dust. However, the view did exist before Christianity and Aristotle said, in no uncertain terms, that some animals grow spontaneously and not from other animals of their kind. Earlier believers had to come up with some pretty strange ideas to make their theory work: Anaximander (a Greek philosopher who taught Pythagoras) believed that at some point in man's history, humans had been born from the soil spontaneously in adult form, otherwise they could never have survived. Before we laugh too hard at the ancients, we should note that many Scientists right up to the 19th century believed this, and some even wrote recipe books for making animals. One such recipe (to make a scorpion) calls for basil, placed between two bricks and left in sunlight. The theory was not finally put to rest until 1859, when Louis Pasteur proved it wrong once and for all.

Contributor: JFrater

Jamie is the owner and chief-editor of Listverse. He spends his time working on the site, doing research for new lists, and collecting oddities. He is fascinated with all things historic, creepy, and bizarre.

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10 Debunked Scientific Beliefs Of The Past - Listverse

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