Positivity: Nobel Prize Awarded to Researchers Who Discovered True Source of Ulcers

Note how long it took them to convince the “know it all” world that they were right (HT Crooked Timber; also noted by Porkopolis before my post; bold is mine):

BARRY Marshall and Robin Warren last night joined the select group of Australian Nobel laureates, winning the 2005 medicine award for proving a bacterium, not stress, caused stomach ulcers and gastritis.

The West Australian researchers, the first Australians to win a Nobel Prize since Peter Doherty in 1996, were recognised for their discovery 23 years ago of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, which allowed stomach ulcers to be treated with antibiotics.

Professor Marshall, 54, researches at the University of Western Australia, while 68-year-old Dr Warren worked as a pathologist at the Royal Perth Hospital, where they conducted their breakthrough research.

In an experiment in 1984, Professor Marshall defeated sceptics by swallowing a culture of Helicobacter pylori, giving himself gastritis, then curing it with antibiotics.

“Thanks to the pioneering discovery by Marshall and Warren, peptic ulcer disease is no longer a chronic, frequently disabling condition, but a disease that can be cured by a short regimen of antibiotics and acid secretion inhibitors,” the Nobel Assembly said in its citation.

…. Professor Marshall told of the battle to get their findings - which overturned the conventional wisdom that stress and lifestyle were the major causes of ulcers - accepted. “After about three years, we were pretty convinced these bacteria were important to ulcers,” he said.

“It was a frustrating time - for about 10 years, nobody believed us. People believed we were somewhat eccentric.

“We did not see the discovery implemented properly until about 1996. These days, GPs routinely treat ulcers with antibiotics and don’t really think anything about it.”