alt Hacker NewsThe miasma theory of disease was "not even wrong" in the sense that it was formulated before we even had the modern scientific method to define the criteria for a theory in the first place. And it was sort of accidentally correct in that some non-infectious diseases are caused by airborne toxins.
Plenty of scientific authorities believed in it through the 19th century, and they didn't blindly believe it: it had good arguments for it, and intelligent people weighed the pros and cons of it and often ended up on the side of miasma over contagionism. William Farr was no idiot, and he had sophisticated statistical arguments for it. And, as evidence that it was a scientific theory, it was abandoned by its proponents once contagionism had more evidence on its side.
It's only with hindsight that we think contagionism is obviously correct.