In our 24/7 news cycle, it’s easy to forget that just because something isn’t front and center in the media doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. As it turns out, things are being discovered and developed all the time, it can just be a bit hard to hear about.
Someone asked “Scientists, what’s a discovery that should have blown people’s minds but somehow got a collective shrug from the world?” and people shared their best examples. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to add your own ideas below.
#1
Cereal fortification in the 1990s. It has saved so many babies from spinal deformities. It is my favorite study + outcome.
Image credits: shelby-goes-on-redit
#2
I grew up in the midst of the AIDS crisis. It was twice as scary as covid and ten times as devastating. The fact that they essentially found a cure and AIDS/HIV is no longer a physical or social death sentence is overwhelming in the best way and the fact that it’s rarely talked about is overwhelming in the worst way.
cpersin24:
I’m a microbiologist and every time I taught the HIV/AIDS section i was still amazed at how fast we went from knowing nothing about this disease to today where we are testing vaccines and have treatments that keep infected pregnant patients from passing HIV to their babies or keep infected people from passing it to their partners. And we can allow infected people to live out their natural life. I agree it’s amazing how this went from devastating to almost a non-issue in less than two generations.
Image credits: the_owl_syndicate
#3
Honestly, mapping the human genome was assumed to be impossible for decades until it was done in a few short years without the fanfare it deserved. An absolutely mind-blowing accomplishment.
Pabu85:
I’m alive because of genetic testing we were only able to do because of that discovery. I’m thankful every day.
Image credits: CompanyOther2608
#4
The invention of the blue LED. That s**t changed absolutely everything in electronics. The Blue LED allowed us the final piece needed to produce true “white” light. Paved the way for everything with a screen.
Image credits: Weak_Ad_7269
#5
I worked on the HPV vaccine. I helped prove you can give it to children and just eliminate that entire disease. Never gotta worry about that s**t again.
Nobody gives a s**t. Half the country apparently hates us for even doing it.
Espieglerie:
The HPV vaccine is a god damn miracle. I work in public health and it’s wonderful to see study after study showing plummeting rates of cervical, anal, head and neck, etc cancers everywhere it’s been rolled out. I also did a grad school case study on the vaccine and it was cool seeing it start with, iirc, three of the worst strains of HPV and then scale up to the 9 valent.
Image credits: YOUR_TRIGGER
#6
Jet packs. We spent 200 years fantasising about them as an idea, and now that they exist in working form and you can buy them online, it’s barely registered.
Image credits: ImpressNice299
#7
I’m no scientist but I feel like the micro plastics in all our testicles and beyond the brain barrier was a shockingly non reaction.
Image credits: ComfortablyNomNom
#8
Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. Historically stem cell research used cells derived from embryonic sources. That raises tons of ethical debates. In addition, I believe it can cause issues with the body rejecting cells if they come from someone other than the transplant recipient.
Scientists then discovered that you could take ordinary skin cells from a person and expose the cells to certain transcription factors which effectively reprogram them into stem cells. From there the cells can be differentiated into specific cell types like cardiac cells, neurons, etc. An example usage would be to take a Parkinson’s patient who has lost 95% of the cells of the neuronal pathway involved in motor activity and other things, harvest their skin cells, convert them to stems cells, differentiate them into neurons and transplant them into the brain thereby recovering some of the deficits. It’s unbelievably fascinating stuff and blew my mind when I first learned about it. I don’t think they’ve even scratched the surface of its potential. Especially when you combine it with CRISPR to modify the genetics so you can potentially cure/treat all sorts of diseases.
Image credits: __fallen_angle
#9
We basically “cured” most people of cystic fibrosis in the last five years. It is the most miraculous medical breakthrough I can think of, comparable only to insulin treatment for diabetics or the triple cocktail for HIV patients in the 90s. In the span of five years, thousands of cystic fibrosis patients saw their projected lifespans go up to normal. The treatments don’t work on every CF mutation, but they are incredible. The Atlantic published an article last year that made me sob.
Image credits: throwaway-94552
#10
Not as crazy as other ones, but… as a type 1 diabetic I find it crazy that they can just make insulin hahaha. You’re telling me my organs can’t but somebody in a lab can just find the formula? Hahahaha.
Image credits: DiabeticDino45
#11
I read recently where South Koreas scientists found a way to revert a colon cancer cell to an almost normal cell which would eliminate the need for chemo. Early stages but wow, why aren’t we all over the moon and helping research?
Image credits: Pelagic_One
#12
My girlfriend has hashimoto and her thyroid is basically non-existent anymore. She only has to take one small pill in the morning to live a normal life instead of being dead by now. Millions of people in this world take one small pill each day and are able to live with a disease that would have been deadly back in the day.
Edit: I just wanted to clarify that there is no cure for Hashimoto and my partner is simply taking Levothyroxine to compensate for the thyroid. I am very sorry if I gave some people false hopes with my original comment.
Image credits: Buchlinger
#13
It seems relevant to this thread to inform everyone that in 1994, the invention of the year went to the widget in a can of Guinness that help carbonate a Guinness only when you opened it.
Second place was The Internet.
Sometimes the world doesn’t care because they don’t really understand.
Image credits: Myburgher
#14
I’m not sure shrug is the right word but mRNA vaccines are a miracle.
GoofinOffAtWork:
Yes they really frickin are.
I’m just an average guy, not a scientist or dr, but this technology, just wow. A huge game changer.
Regrettably, half of society thinks vaccines are bad.
Heavy heavy sigh.
Image credits: kwixta
#15
“Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty” (2012) by economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson.
Basically, these two men proved a causational relation between a country having well-funded institutions and country wealth. As in: they proved that strong and fair institutions CAUSE nation wealth. As in: having good institutions is the best indicator of future wealth (on national level).
While their book has been quite successful and their research won the 2024 nobel prize of economics, politics worldwide remain unchanged. Their research, which should singlehandedly disprove economical libertarianism and destroy the idea of preferring a “small government”, has done little to stop the resurgence of these policies in recent times.
#16
I feel like the James Webb telescope hype came and went very quickly. I was very hype keeping up with how intricate and difficult it was to design, launch and deploy that marvel orbiting the sun. If something were to go wrong, very small chance we could fix it. The Hubble’s problems we could fix because it was in Earth’s low orbit and astronauts could get in there and fix it. S**t, while we’re at it, add Hubble to that list. And the Space Shuttle missions.
Image credits: Golemo
#17
Cancer immunotherapy.
D***s like opdivo and keytruda have changed the game in cancer treatment. They are barely ten years old and most people don’t know about them.
Image credits: ghostofwinter88
#18
GLP-1s. It’s nothing short of revolutionary. Not only does it stabilize blood sugar in diabetics, and promotes weightloss for obese people who have no luck with other treatments. It also curbs addictions to alcohol, smoking, even shopping. It has been shown to be protective for cardiovascular health, used for kidney failure. It’s a treatment for certain liver diseases. And that’s just what we have confirmed so far. In my book GLP-1s are right up there with penicillin and pasteurization.
Image credits: MexicanVanilla22
#19
The discovery of the memory engram, and artificially manipulating memories within the brain.
This guy at Boston University was able to not only identify the exact groups of neurons that correspond to an individual memory in the brain, but he was also able to manipulate those memories to delete or artificially create new ones. Really the most sci-fi thing I’ve heard about in real life. Check out Dr. Steve Ramirez’s Ted talk on YouTube, he’s a very down to earth guy and explains the entire subject fantastically.
Image credits: rochambeau44
#20
Vaccines in general, the Covid vaccine was a goddamned scientific miracle.
Image credits: Fresh_Association_16
#21
Not a scientist but it blows my mind we casually walk around with devices that can show us where we are within a few feet anywhere on earth. And how to get to anywhere else. GPS, led screens, lithium batteries and CPUs. Sometimes it’s the combination that creates something mind blowing.
Image credits: Sir_mjon
#22
Climate change apparently.
#23
Lazer eye surgery.
invisibo:
I had a PRK procedure done a couple years ago. Being able to function without glasses has been life changing. Before surgery, I couldn’t see the ‘E’ everyone is supposed to be able to see. However, I can still recall the smell of my eyeball flesh being burned away :/
#24
I’m not a scientist, but I saw where scientists in Japan have found a way to grow teeth, which would eliminate the need for implants. In the not to distant future, you might see adults walking around with baby teeth.
#25
There is absolutely no biological nor genetic basis for race.
#26
CRISPR-Cas9 is actual Jurassic Park s**t.
People who were born blind have had their sight regained due to genetic tinkering made possible by this biological tech.
Mosquitos can be eliminated, practically eradicating Malaria by editing the genes, which are then passed on to offspring, making them sterile.
Food can be, and has been, made more nutritious, as in the case of Golden Rice, producing more Vitamin A in impoverished countries.
It’s Gattaca in the flesh, and people just shrugged
Edit: A lot of people are asking “Why do I still have mosquitos? or Why hasn’t this happened yet??” and I can say that this technology is still extremely nascent.
It’s a massive achievement of humanity and another foothold in our ability to shape nature, but it is still inaccurate. Targeting specific genes in different species, let alone our own, is time-consuming and requires many trials to get right.
Targeting multiple genes, at the same time, is exponentially more difficult. Remember that genes are just DNA sequences at random events on the entire chain. And each sequence is rarely actually next to each other on the chain.
Some of you have also mentioned that we don’t fully understand the effect this would have on not only one species but all those others that interact with whichever we were trying to alter.
In short.. It’s incredibly high-tech, and with incredible technology comes incredible questions and incredible consequences that need to be considered before fully deploying.
#27
Eastern bloc nations, Georgia in particular, have been using bacteriophages to battle bacteria infections for many decades while the west focused on developing antibiotics. You can get bacteriophage treatment in the US when they’ve tried everything else and you’ve somehow managed to survive it. Seems the d**g companies have a hard time figuring out how to make money on the treatment so it gets pushed to the very thin edge margin of medicine.
Update:
Bacteriophages are used as a matter of course in genetic research; I’ve specified and used them myself. This is not that.
Historically the technique is to find a naturally occurring (mutated) phage that will attack the specific bacteria in question. In the US, the overriding concern has been the potential of shiga-toxin, or similar, producing genes present in the phage. This latter is wrong headed two ways in my experience which makes the assertion suspect to me. Though I haven’t seen anything conclusive, the decades of research prior haven’t shown this to be an issue. Regardless, it’s an almost trivial test with today’s technology.
A fun question: Guess where you usually look for a suitable phage?
#28
AlphaFold 2 has a very real chance of being the most transformative tool in the history of the biological sciences. It’s open source and free to download, which means that any bio lab in the *world* can get ahold of it, and because it’s open source it’s easy to adapt to specific situations, even more than a CCNN normally is, which is a *lot.* The research currently being done with AlphaFold’s help will shape the entire human experience for decades, at least, and it’s comparatively *brand new.*
But a lot of people are yelling at the top of their lungs about AI in the abstract, in both directions, and actual developments get drowned out by the vitriol. It feels surreal to know that we may have hit on something comparable, in terms of influence on human society, to the invention of the clay-fired brick, and no one seems to notice.
#29
Claude Shannon and information theory. It took a while to grab hold and for the technology to catch up, but computers, cell phones, streaming, www, etc. would have been significantly delayed for not his work.
#30
1. The discovery of gravitational waves. Which should open a whole new way to see the universe, including events before the ionization event in the early universe.
2. Ai tools that can efficiently determine the structure of proteins, which was proceeding very slowly before this discovery.
#31
PCR technology turned genetics into a productive science in a way that very few people realize.
#32
Prion disease.
People don’t really understand it and so they shrug it off to the point that I have seen people giving away deer meat that was chronic wasting disease positive and someone picked that meat up to consume. Then, I was banned from the group for freaking out about it.
#33
Not a scientist, but quantum entanglement is pretty f*****g cool. Most people have no idea what it is, though. Hell, I barely understand it, just have a gist.
#34
The fax modem. It was invented in 1843 or so, but sat around for 120 years because everyone just sort of shrugged and didn’t really know what to do with it until the Internet was invented. Most people think of it as being heavily in use in the 1970s and 1980s and whatever, but no– it’s a 19th century invention that got a collective shrug from the cowboys of its day.
#35
How to land humans on the moon. Incredible technology, but no one was interested in developing it further. There is still some talk of it, and that technology would still exist, but nothing has been done.
#36
The DAA pills that essentially cured Hepatitis C 90% of the time. Lots of d***s treat the disease, but few ever cure.
#37
140 year old DNA evidence may have identified the identity of Jack the Ripper.
From a February 15th article on the New York Post:
“English historian and author Russell Edwards said DNA found on a shawl recovered from the scene of one of the k**ler’s vicious slayings was tested, revealing the butcher who terrorized Victorian London’s East End in the late 1800s was a 23-year-old Polish immigrant named Aaron Kosminski — who died in a mental institution in 1919.
“When we matched the DNA from the blood on the shawl with a direct female descendant of the victim, it was the singular most amazing moment of my life at the time,” Edwards told “Today” in Australia. ”
#38
Not a scientist but a student here- central pattern generators. Neuroscientists figured out that our spine can generate rhythmic movement patterns (such as walking) without brain involvement. This is currently being explored for treatment options for spinal cord injury. A local researcher with a lab dedicated to this came to my neuroscience class last semester and did a guest lecture on it. He thinks we’re within 20 years of people paralyzed from SCI being able to walk again with an electric implant. I think about this at least once a week and have never heard this mentioned by non-neuroscience people.
#39
The first picture of a black hole. It was a big news story but I don’t think the general public got how cool that is.
Here’s the image.
#40
The fact that long ago there were several different species of humans who lived at the same time.
#41
Laurence R. Doyle’s discovery that dolphins, similar to humans, have a structured language with syntactical complexity.
#42
30 years ago, Japan developed a replacement for Saran Wrap or shrink wrap that was actually more durable and biodegradable. It failed test markers in America because 1) it was made out of shrimp shells 2) it had a pink hue 3) false belief that shellfish allergies would cause people to become sick 4) the packaging had shrimp 🦐 yes with the heads.
#43
We are on the cusp of Nuclear Fusion as an energy source, and it seems to just get swept under the rug.
#44
I also found the discovery of exoplanets so fascinating bc we are still discovering them as we speak. I read that early philosophers were speculating exoplanets existed, and now we have confirmation with technology. I just find it so fascinating. It makes me think of all the things we speculate on now that future technology and humans will discover when we are far gone.
#45
The doctors in London who proved cholera was bacteria in water- it wasn’t the result of odours or bad smells as it were. Just by mapping where the cases were in relation to which street water pumps. Populace angry with them as one of the wells had the ‘nicest’ water.
Removed the pump handles. Cases went down then disappeared.
Until then cholera and many diseases (‘malaria- mal means bad so bad air) thought to be the cause of air borne smells. Of course a few like TB are droplet carried.
#46
It’s less a specific technology and more a broad sense, but we’ve progressed more in the last 5 years than we did in the 200,000 years it took us to get here. We’ve had fusion reactions! Quantum computers! AI (while I dislike the art aspect) has revolutionized how we interact with information.
Basically, I’m so excited to see what technology will look like in the next 10-50-100 years i can barely contain my excitement! We’ve progressed Bit information so much that in the next few years we will need to discover a whole new way of processing information, because we’ve perfected it already!!!!!
#47
Back in 2016, when the results of the CTE brain analysis on former football players went up in JAMA and showed just how extensive and common these injuries are, it should have caused an uproar. And people were aware of it, to be sure, but it seems like most have chosen to just ignore it and assume it’s someone else’s problem, along with hollow justifications like “they knew what they were getting into” and “they get compensated well enough for that risk.”.
#48
Not a scientist, but the Theory of Inflation, how all matter and energy in the universe was created in the blink of an eye. Small variations at the largest scales are connected to quantum fluctuations at the smallest scales before the expansion. Basically the bang of the Big Bang, and yet nobody seems
To get how fundamental this is.
#49
Don’t know if it’s been mentioned, but if you grew up in the 70s you heard a LOT about stomach ulcers k**ling people…it was blamed on stress, but one scientist figured out it was a bacteria and tested it on himself.
That guy needs a statue.
#50
Next generation sequencing! This is how we are able to sequence people’s genomes in a few days for a few thousand dollars, while the original human genome project spent about $1 billion to sequence the first human genome. It’s what’s making medicine possible.
#51
Μy husband has a rare autoimmune. He should be dead. He just takes a pill a day. The rare deceases dont take much publicity but they change and save peoples life. Shout out to everyone involved.
#52
Published in late 2024 was a study showing that silicates played a catalytic role in the formation of amino-acids and proto-cells, taking a huge step in validating abiogenesis as the origin of life.
Basically, they redid the Miller-Urey experiment (which already showed simple organic compounds could emerge from inorganic compounds in conditions similar to early Earth), with a difference : in order to avoid external interferences, they coated the container with teflon and put it in a dark room.
What happened was…nothing. No reaction occured, no new compound were formed, contrary to the original experiment. Since the container in the original experiment was glass, they decided to add a few silicate pellets in their container and redo the experiment.
The results were even better than expected :
– they obtained fully formed amino-acids, not just simple organic compounds.
– among these amino-acids were the five that make up DNA and RNA.
– fully closed phospholipid chains, aka empty proto-cells, were observed.
#53
GS 441524. A medication developed for an extremely funky cat disease called FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis).
This awful mutation of feline coronavirus has a 100% fatality rate if left untreated, and the medication I stated above was first synthesized in 2018 by Gilead Sciences, an HIV medication company in Raleigh NC. This medication took it from a 100% death rate to a 95%+ survival rate basically instantly. Other countries legalized it long before the US did (which is strange since it was synthesized here but you know the FDA) and it is wild how it instantly attacks and eliminates symptoms of FIP.
Our cat had Neurological FIP, with her symptoms being extreme lethargy, dehydration, complete loss of appetite and thirst, loss of balance, and a fever. Most of her symptoms were completely gone in about a week. The fever broke after the first dose. Please if you’ve got cats, inform yourself about this awful disease. Most cats that pass away from it nowadays only do so because it is incredibly difficult to diagnose without an MRI or spinal tap, and if you don’t get them on the medicine very quickly they don’t make it long.
BTW I’m no scientist but I’ve completely educated myself on the world of this disease since having to treat it with our cat.
#54
This at the time it was extremely significant.
The eradication of Smallpox, one of humanity’s deadliest diseases. Nowadays it’s shrouded in a bunch of anti-vax b******t, should it ever come back there is no way we’d be able to eradicate it.
Similarly, in 2011, we eliminated Rhinderpest, a common infectious disease among cattle. To date, these two diseases are the only diseases in history to be eradicated worldwide and are no longer a threat to life.
I wish to also remind you that the *global* effort to eradicate one of the deadliest diseases in cattle cost $5 billion USD. Smallpox eradication was $300 million in 1967, accounting for inflation that’s about $2.8 billion USD.
A collective $7.8 billion to globally eradicate some of the deadliest diseases on planet earth.
#55
That we are star dust. Literally.
#56
# The fact that bacteria can communicate — and have their own “language.”
**→** ***Quorum sensing***
Scientists discovered that bacteria aren’t just single-celled loners they actually communicate with chemical signals, vote on decisions, and act collectively when they reach a “quorum” (like, “Okay, now there’s enough of us, let’s release the toxins / form a biofilm / light up like in bioluminescence”).
It’s like social media for microbes. Literal **group chats** for germs. And it’s been happening on Earth way before humans even existed.
And we just… shrugged?
This has massive implications from understanding infections to rethinking antibiotics to designing new bioengineered systems. It’s like realizing ants build cities… but on a *molecular* scale.
#57
The digital camera which was invented by an engineer in Kodak. Kodak wanted to keep things traditional and brushed off his invention.
#58
The solid state transistor, what was once the size of a light bulb is now in nanometers and there are billions of them in a single PC processor smaller than a postage stamp.
#59
In the last couple of years they discovered an algae that had non-lethally absorbed a bacteria that produced nitrogen. It’s the birth of a whole new form of metabolism. The sprouting of a new trunk on the tree of life.
There are only 3 other known cases of an event like this in the history of life. And yet I barely heard anything about it.
The Japanese plastic eating bacteria got more coverage, but still not nearly enough.
#60
There is a promising new treatment device for tinnitus (developed by u Michigan) that is waiting for FDA approval, really can’t wait.
#61
My mind went off in another direction.
Judging by all of the hype, we were supposed to be blown away by the invention of the century that would change all of human kind…come to find out it wasn’t all humankind, just mall security…
Segway. No one cared.
#62
The Protein Folding Problem has been largely solved.
We can take a string of amino acids and predict the structure with a high degree of accuracy in minutes. This used to take years.
The knowledge gained from this will change medicine and evolution in ways that we cannot yet comprehend.
#63
As a geologist, the discovery of mantle blobs and the latest theory that they may be debris from whatever early planetary collision that formed moon is f*****g wild.
#64
That in 2022, we achieved net positive fusion energy, or Q=1. More recently we’ve gotten Q=2.3.
We did it on 1970 laser technology. Our modern stuff just needs to be technically proven in this high power setup. Just need to make the cheap industrial high power lasers and array towards a reaction chamber. We could have real fusion power plants in the next five to ten years.
#65
Photons behave differently when they’re being observed by a human or instrument vs. when they’re not being observed.
#66
Still a lot more to do here but we recently discovered a potential explanation for how environmental and metabolic factors influence the expression of certain genes in our DNA: amyloid proteins.
This is remarkable because it partially redeems long-debunked genetic theorists like Lamarck, Lysenko and Ivan Michurin who thought environmental factors were the primary drivers of heritability, and believed DNA was over-sold in this regard.
Problem was that once we better understood DNA, we slightly over-corrected and dismissed environmental/metabolic influence in favour of DNA-exclusive thinking, but that has always failed to fully explain a few things. Recentish studies have shown things like heritability in alcoholism, which was poorly explained by DNA but IS explained by DNA methylation and amyloid proteins which can essentially cause certain genes within your DNA to express more strongly, or less strongly, or even switch off entirely.
Basically it turned out the truth was, and always has been, a mix of both. Dismissing the primacy of DNA was foolish for the Lamarckist/Michurinist faction of scientists, but mainstream researchers also made a huge blunder in dismissing the opposing school of thought for so long as well.
#67
The sewing machine.
Yes, there were good looms, but man, if the sewing machine was in the age of social media, it would be the next best thing.
#68
An oldie but a goodie: stellar spectroscopy.
Because of quantum mechanics, when light passes close to an atom, sometimes the electrons in change orbital they either emit or absorb photons. On a galactic scale, if you’ve got lots of atoms that can add up to A LOT of light.
But electron orbitals have a specific energy depending on the element and only photons of *exactly that energy* can be absorbed. And photon energy is determined by wavelength. And we know the elements’ characteristic wavelengths *very well*.
So that adds up to a lot of extra or a lot of missing photons that travel ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE UNIVERSE to our telescopes.
So we essentially know what elements are in stars and the intervening media from hundreds of light years away, on the largest scale known to man because of the interaction of the smallest scale known to man.
#69
Dating based around yyyy/mm/dd instead of mm/dd/yyyy
Does anyone have any idea how much of a time save it is when your inputting any data files into a computer? Just one click, and you have a neat, chronological list of all files bunched together with similar topics, but folks in The States get so mad whenever you put the year first instead of the month.