Reddit reviews The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science

Although this gets repeated often, it is 100% wrong...

When Wegener proposed continental drift, he did not have a plausible mechanism and there was no global consensus at all. Most in USA rejected it, but many in Europe, UK, Australia thought it had merit, including one of the great UK geoscientists, Arthur Holmes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Holmes

A good detailed history is by Naomi Oreskes:
The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science (1999)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rejection-Continental-Drift-American/dp/0195117336
Naomi went to Imperial College London (school of mines) as an undergrad, and her Preface describes shock at finding Wegener's ideas had long gained some acceptance:

"And although I had only just learned of these ideas two years before, my English flatmate could pull out the dog-eared copy of Arthur Holmes's 1945 textbook she had read in elementary school. ... Working as a professional geologist in Australia - I learned - often from mildly indignant colleagues - not only that many Australian geologists knew about and believed in the idea of continental drift in the 1940s and 1950s but also that in several instances they were ridiculed at international meetings or on visits to the United States by rude and ignorant Americans."

There just was not a consilience of data for decades, so there were a bunch of competing hypotheses, split between 2 main camps, and with different rules (I think).

When the post-WW II data became available, with a clear mechanism, a fight that had gone for decades essentially evaporated, and plate tectonics was widely accepted as a strong consensus

Concerning the importance of the scientific consensus, I'm going to offer a quote from the introduction to Naomi Oreskes' book The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science:

"The history of science demonstrates, however, that the scientific truths of yesterday are often viewed as misconceptions, and, conversely, that ideas rejected in the past may now be considered true. History is littered with the discarded beliefs of yesteryear, and the present is populated by epistemic corrections. This realization leads us to the central problem of the history and philosophy of science: How are we to evaluate contemporary sciences's claims to truth given the perishability of past scientific knowledge? This question is of considerable philosophic interest and of practical import as well. If the truths of today are the falsehoods of tomorrow, what does this say about the nature of scientific truth? And if our knowledge is perishable and incomplete, how can we warrant its use in sensitive social and political decision-making?" -- Naomi Oreskes,