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1. Confirmation bias
- Confirmation bias may be present because people notice coincidences more than they do not. They may be mistaking coincidences for this theory
2. Confusion of correlation with causation
- People may have been confusing the connection between a mothers actions and the child's characteristics as being the cause of these characteristics.

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1. Simplicity
- Because there was very little information about prenatal care and the effects a mothers actions can/cannot have on a child, this was an easy answer to inexplicable things such as birth defects

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Maternal impression is the theory "that a pregnant woman’s experiences are directly imprinted on her unborn child". This was the theory that people used to explain why children were born with certain birth defects or characteristics. People believed that a mothers thoughts or actions would impact the unborn child.

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maternal impressions - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com

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Mozart effect. We now know, however, that both physical and psychological illness or stress in the mother can affect the fetus in adverse ways.

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- A flaw to this theory is that when people resettled to more arid places, the weather did not change.

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1. Confirmation bias
- people may have noticed "more rain" but in reality, they only noticed the days that it rained and not the days it didnt rain.

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1. Patternicity
- People may have believed they say the pattern of more rainfall where they relocated/resettled.
2. Perception/observation
- When people located, they most likely observed more rainfall in the location they moved to. However, this may not have been a result of the rain "following" them, but simply because they observed it first hand - they perceived that there was more rainfall.

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This theory states that human settlement had an impact on the weather of a certain geographical location. It was believed that this allowed people to settle on more arid areas.

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U.S. Route 50 is one desolate bummer. Stretching from Sacramento through America's guts all the way to Maryland, the segment through Nevada is indeed known as the Loneliest Road in America, where there are-and trust me on this-suicidal jackrabbits that leap in front of your car, the only vehicle for perhaps dozens of miles in either direction.

Keep heading east on 50 and desert turns to Rocky Mountains and eventually gives way to mile after mile of comparably lonely farmland. These are the Great Plains, and at first glance it doesn't seem like such a fantastic place to farm, on account of the general aridness. Yet following the Civil War, settlers, all doped up on Manifest Destiny, left the East and staked their claims here.

For years they scraped by. But it seemed like as time went on, more rain fell, and consequently the people of the plains got this funny idea: The increasing rainfall over the years must be somehow due to their farming.

Call it superstition or call it pseudoscience, what began as mythology among the Great Plains farmers eventually turned into a widely accepted scientific theory in the U.S. between 1865 and 1875: " The rain follows the plow." Journalists, scientists, government officials, you name it-Americans were convinced that through their farming they'd goaded Mother Nature into providing more water. That is, until Mother Nature suddenly shut off the spigot and showed us just how disastrously wrong we'd been.

The spread of the myth, according to Henry Nash Smith in his essay "Rain Follows the Plow: The Notion of Increased Rainfall for the Great Plains," can be largely blamed on America's most reliable villain: greed. It was those standing to profit from a prosperous West-the real estate speculators, the railroads, and the politicians-who propagated the tale, for "the pressures making for high estimates of the economic potentialities of the plains were strong and varied," Smith writes.

Journalists at the time were only too willing to help. The New-York Tribune reported in 1866 that cultivation could "subdue" arid belts. The Republican of Springfield, Massachusetts wrote "some theorists contend that with the occupation and use of the country, rains will multiply; and the observations of the Mormons give a faint encouragement to this idea."

Thus the seed of the theory was planted in the hoity-toity East. And the primary cultivators of this rotten plant, according to Smith, were the following four prominent men.

The Four Horsemen of the Pseudoscience Apocalypse

First up: Ferdinand Hayden, director of the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories from 1868 to 1879. He reckoned that the plains had such low humidity because the Rocky Mountains stripped all the moisture from wind blowing in from the Pacific Ocean. His solution? Plant a sort of palisade of trees on the eastern plains, and the forests will bring you rain. "Hayden had rationalized," writes Smith, "and had given pseudo-scientific status to what had originally been but a vague poetic expression of the massive optimism of the Western Movement," that climate could be hijacked by man.

Next up was Richard Smith Elliott, publicity agent for the Kansas Pacific Railway, a sort of salesman for its plentiful land holdings. In a similar vein to Hayden, he suggested planting trees along his company's railroad. And, really, you may not even need to go that far. Elliott thought the railroad itself encouraged rainfall, as did power lines. That may sound crazy to you, but it somehow made sense to the hallowed Smithsonian Institution: It published Elliott's writings on the subject in its Annual Report of 1870.

There was also Samuel Aughey, a professor of natural sciences at the University of Nebraska. He brought the theory into the ivory tower, essentially accusing the people of Nebraska of squandering their "wonderful inheritance of wealth, beauty, and power" by not fully developing their lands. For Aughey, it was the "great increase in the absorptive power of the soil, wrought by cultivation, that has caused, and continues to cause an increasing rainfall in the State."

Now enter Charles Dana Wilber, an amateur scientist (not that being an amateur in this whole mess was any excuse) who was in the habit of building whole towns in Nebraska-the type of man my father would call a "real piece of work." He had a "gift of phrase much greater than that of Aughey," writes Smith, and was the fellow responsible for the maxim "rain follows the plow."

Wilber wrote: "To those who possess the divine faculty of hope-the optimists of our times-it will always be a source of pleasure to understand that the Creator never imposed a perpetual desert upon the earth, but, on the contrary, has so endowed it that man, by the plow, can transform it, in any country, into farm areas." (Why God wouldn't just make it rain more in the first place without having humans do all the work is a bit unclear, but I suspect much of Wilber's thinking was unclear.)

So how did Wilber know God set it up this way? It was in the Bible, of course, specifically Genesis. From Wilber (parentheticals his own, except for this one, obviously): "But there went up a mist (dew) from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, (because) and there was not a man to till the ground."

So there you have it: The Four Horsemen bring the notion that rain follows the plow not only into the mainstream, but right into intellectual thought. That is, until nature pulled the old switcheroo. Drought hit the plains starting in 1887 and peaking in 1891, according to Smith, which would seem to suggest all that effort put into tilling was for naught. And it was around this time that so-called " dry farming " techniques gained currency. No longer did farmers hope to fool Mother Nature into giving up more water-they made do with what little moisture the soil could retain.

Yet in the 1890s, agricultural pseudoscience simply took on another form. The idea came around that explosives could be used to generate the vibrations required for rainfall. Folks seemed to realize that while not nearly as nutritious, dynamite sure was a much more entertaining way to produce rain than breaking your back growing a bunch of crops. But that's a story for another week.

The theory of rain following plows did persist in local superstition through the turn of the century, though, according to Smith. One Cleveland Abbe of the U.S. Weather Bureau, for instance, reported receiving "letters from cranks on the question of man-caused drought or rain" into the 1930s. And of course it was, ironically enough, drought and excessive tilling that caused that decade's horrendous Dust Bowl. American science had learned its lesson: When superstition and profiteering collide, stay the hell out of the fray. Even if you bring dynamite.

Modern climatology, however, may be turning up evidence that both cities and farmlands can indeed influence the weather. One researcher has found evidence that crops are cooling the Midwest, while another is studying whether corn is driving up dew points, leading to more intense thunderstorms. But, even if there is a link, simply planting more corn or throwing up more buildings won't transform the climate of an entire region. The effects would be local.

Even NASA has investigated the influences of big cities on increased rainfall, finding that areas downwind of metropolises tend to feel the effect most, which may be due to buildings and asphalt heating air that rises and forms clouds. In addition, the pollutant aerosols that cities release en masse may provide the particles that moisture collects around, eventually turning into raindrops.

And there you have it: The solution all along may have been to just pollute more. Ain't nothing more American than that.
Reference:
Smith, H. (1947) Rain Follows the Plow: The Notion of Increased Rainfall for the Great Plains, 1844-1880. Huntington Library Quarterly:vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 169-193

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Fantastically Wrong: American Greed and the Harebrained Theory of 'Rain Follows the Plow'

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U.S. Route 50 is one desolate bummer. Stretching from Sacramento through America's guts all the way to Maryland, the segment through Nevada is indeed known as the Loneliest Road in America, where there are-and trust me on this-suicidal jackrabbits that leap in front of your car, the only vehicle for perhaps dozens of miles in...

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- A flaw with this theory is that if someone looses too much blood, they will have severe negative consequences. If doctors took too much blood, the opposite of what they were trying to achieve would occur

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1. Appeal to authority
- People believed in this theory because doctors and other respected individuals were endorsing it to be true.
2. Ancient wisdom
- This theory is based on the ancient belief of the four elements, which may make people more inclined to believe it.
3. All natural
- This method of "healing" used all natural methods instead of medicines and different chemicals

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1. Simplicity
- Like many other historical medicinal theories, this may have simply been an understandable answer to difficult medical questions, especially due to the lack of medical knowledge available.
2. Emotional connection
- People may have believed this theory in the hope that if it were true, they would be able to better care for sick loved ones, even though in reality it may have done more damage to them.

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Bloodletting is the theory that draining the body of large amounts of blood would cure the body of any illness it had. It was created as a result of growth in the belief of the four humors, and was practiced for over 2,000 years.

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- A flaw of this theory is that some elements weigh more after they burn than they did before. An example of this is mercury. If this theory was true, there should be less weight after burning because the phlogiston would have been released.

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1. Appeal to authority
- The people that were endorsing this theory to be true were typically well respected scientists, which may have swayed people into believing this theory.

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1. Simplicity
- People did not have scientific knowledge, so therefore this theory was an easy to understand answer.
2. Unexplained
- People had no way of explaining what happened when an object burned, so like above, this was a way of explaining that.

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This is a theory that states that there is a "fire-like" element present in all "combustible bodies". It was believed to be what makes things burn. Some things, such as charcoal had a higher amount of phlogiston because it left little residue after burning, where as things such as wood, which has a lower phlogiston content, left more residue.

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Why do things burn? Because phlogiston, that's why. This was an Act of Whimsy for the DIY Science Zone at GeekGirlCon. Help the DIY Science Zone happen by donating!

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1. Appeal to authority
- Many people believe things when they come from respected and educated people, such as doctors, and because doctors were the only ones with medical knowledge at the time, what they said was usually not questioned.
2. All natural
- Doctors claimed that these four humors were natural parts of the human body. As long as they were kept balanced, by doing things in moderation, you would not get ill

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1. simplicity
- Due to the lack of medical science, and because of the fact that these four humors related directly to the four elements, which many people believed in may have led them to to believe this theory was a simple answer to many medical questions.
2. Ideology
- Many people had societal beliefs that the world was comprised of the four elements. when the theory of the four humors arose, it was easy to connect this theory to their pre-existing ideologies.
3. Emotional connection
- Because this theory connects with peoples illnesses and the negative results that may result from these illnesses, people may have been more inclined to believe this theory because it could potentially help cure loved ones of their illnesses.

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This theory states that a persons body was made up of four humors - Black bile, Yellow Bile, Phlegm, and blood. If there was a balance of these, a person would be healthy. If there was an imbalance, the person was ill.

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The Four Humours AQA GCSE History A Medicine Through Time What was the theory of the Four Humours? Who thought of it and how? Was it a step forward in medical thinking?

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- One obvious flaw with this theory is that we cannot see in the dark. If this theory was true, humans should be able to posses this ability because we would not have to rely on light reflecting off of things.

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1. Appeal to Authority
- This theory is based around the fact that Aphrodite, a God, gave us the ability to see. People do not usually question things when it comes to the Gods - especially in ancient times.
2. Ancient Wisdom
- Because this was a gift from Aphrodite, many people may believe it to be true simply due to this fact.

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- A flaw for this theory is that it was very hard to prove. Since there were no tools that would allow scientist to confirm this theory, it was all based on opinions and assumptions. This means it was very easy for the people claiming this theory to be true to make mistakes. There was a lot of missing evidence that would have been necessary for this theory to be legit.

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- A flaw of this theory is that it didn't work. There were actual "recipe" books made for how to create your own life form. When people would follow these "recipes" and they did not generate life, people may have started to doubt if this theory was legit or not.
- Another flaw is that people knew that life created life - I.e. having children. They may have questioned why some life is created by other life forms and some seem to "spontaneously generate"

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One obvious flaw with this theory

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- This is the theory that the human eye does not receive light, but instead is emitted by the eye. People beleived that Aphrodite made the eye using the four elements, and that she "sparked a fire" in the eye, which allowed us to see. This theory was even supported by people such as plato.

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1. Unexplained
- Again, due to the lack of scientific evidence, sight was an unexplained concept. Because people still believed everything was comprised of the four elements, its not hard to see why this was an acceptable explanation
2. Simplicity
- People did not understand how the eye functioned, so this theory was a way of giving people an answer to something they did not understand.

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1. Confusion of Correlation and Causation
- Because a majority of cases occurred in places where there was pollution, many believed this air was the cause of their diseases, even though it was not the cause.
2. Ideological support
- Many people believed this theory because it fit into what they had already believed - this theory fit their perception that disease came from the air.

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1. Simplicity
- Because there was virtually no scientific experimentation or even the tools that would allow people to conduct the proper experiments, this may have been a simple answer to why people were contracting these diseases.
2. Unexplained
- Since no proven scientific experiments had been conducted, this was still considered an unexplained phenomenon. This theory may have been the only logical explanation people had at the time.
3, Perception/Observation
- Since no one knew about germs or bacteria, it was their perception that diseases must have come from the air. This theory matched that perception/observation.

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The Miasma theory states that many diseases, such as cholera and chlamydia were caused by "bad air". This "bad air" created Mismas, which were "poisonous emanations, from putrefying carcasses, rotting vegetation or molds, and invisible dust particles inside dwellings" which would get into a persons body and cause illness. It was not until the theory of germs being the cause of disease became more popular in the 1800's that the theory of Miasmas was disposed of.

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Miasma Theory - Dictionary definition of Miasma Theory | Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary

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Definition of Miasma Theory - Our online dictionary has Miasma Theory information from Encyclopedia of Public Health dictionary. Encyclopedia.com: English, psychology and medical dictionaries

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1. Confirmation Bias
- This theory confirmed many peoples pre-existing beliefs that the universe revolved around the Earth.
2. Ideological Support
- Many people believed that God created the universe around the Earth, so it would make sense to believe this theory based on their religious beliefs.

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1. Simplicity
- Ancient Civilizations did not have tools such a telescopes, which would have allowed them to observe space more accurately, so the idea that celestial bodies orbited the earth made sense, because it was what they could observe.
2. Ideology
- Many people already believed the observable celestial bodies orbited the earth, so this theory fit into their pre-existing ideologies.
3. Perception/Observation
- Since people could only observe space with the naked eye, or with very little technology, it was their perception that objects in space, such as the sun and stars appeared to be orbiting the Earth.

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The theory of a Geocentric universe is that the Earth is the center of the universe, and that other planets and stars revolved around us. This theory was created by Ptolemy, and was popular among many different civilizations, mainly due to religious and perceived ideas. However, this theory was debunked when scientists  such as Galileo began more "sophisticated observations". It was eventually fully disproven in "De Revoltionibus Orbium Coelestium" by Nicholas Copernicus.

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1. Appeal to Authority
- Both Anaximander and Aristotle were well known, highly respected philosophers, with a proven track record of solving difficult questions people had. People may have been more inclined to accept their idea of idea of spontaneous generation because of this.
2. Confirmation Bias
- Because people already had a preconceived perception that things appeared to generate spontaneously, this theory confirmed this idea. People also tended to ignore the fact that life in most other occurrences, was generated because of other life forms.
3. Confusion of Correlation with causation
- People may have gotten confused thinking that spontaneous generation was the cause of life appearing.
4. Ideological Support
- Because this theory correlated with many people's religious beliefs, they may have been more inclined to accept this theory as true.

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1. Simplicity
- Without access to modern scientific tools like what we have today, spontaneous generation may have been an easy to understand solution to something that was, at the time, hard to understand.
2. Agenticity
- Because people connected this theory with religion (I.e. the belief that God created man from dust, so it must be true), they may have believed God was spontaneously generating these life forms.
3. Unexplained
- This theory offered a seemingly plausible answer to an event that at the time, seemed unexplained.
4. Perception/Observation
- It was peoples perceived idea that life generated from nothing (I.e. mushrooms growing out of wood)

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Spontaneous Generation is the theory that life could generate from inanimate - or lifeless - objects. This theory was fathered by ancient Greeks, mainly Anaximander and Aristotle. Louis Pasteur debunked this theory in the 1850's.