Unimaginative cowards or Today “Trolls”
The reaction from the geologic community was, in a word, glacial. Since the 1790s, the science of geology had been framed by the principle of "uniformitarianism": the idea that geologic change in the past resulted from the same slow, steady processes at work today. Bretz's flood, with elements that suggested the Biblical story of Noah, seemed like a reversion to a pre-scientific era. It was, said one critic, an "outrageous hypothesis."
Bretz was invited to defend his theory at a meeting sponsored by the Geological Society of Washington D.C., in 1927. Six other geologists presented opposing points of view. Bretz disdainfully referred to the group as the "challenging elders." He was nearly 45 years old at the time, a tenured professor at the University of Chicago, and supremely self-confident. He seemed to relish his self-definition as a lonely avatar of scientific truth. "Understanding the Scablands involves imagination and courageous departure from accepted views," he once wrote, implying that his detractors were unimaginative cowards (Bretz, 1959, p 10).
It took 50+ years for the so called scholars to catch up to his work.