In movies you frequently see a main character with a fringe idea get laughed and scolded by mainstream academics, only for it to later turn out that he was totally correct. Has this ever actually happened in the study of history?

Sorry, we don't allow throughout history questions. These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again.