Gfyuki

It seems ball lightning was disbelieved by scientists until around 1960. See Wikipedia .

I knew a geologist who told us how his eye-witness account of ball lightning had been ridiculed.

Take meteorites, for instance. By the end of the XVIII^th century, educated people “knew” that no rock found on Earth could possibly have fallen from the sky, in spite of the evidence (eyewitnesses included) for their existence. This state of affairs lasted until 1803, when Jean-Baptiste Biot established the reality of meteorites.

Just warning not to include pre-1920s medicine (and a lot of medical mantra thru the 20th century), as there was little to no science involved amongst physicians. Just look at how difficult it was for Lister et. al. to convince hospitals, midwives, etc. to wash their hands and sterilize operating theatres.

There are dozens of incorrect anecdotes purporting to show scientists were wrong. The "bumblebee can't fly" is one such. The truth behind the science/engineering theories is rather different.

The Green Flash was
described for the first time (at least in the Western literature) by Jules Verne,
a science fiction writer.
Many scientists did not believe until photographs were taken and published.

Herbert Wells in 1914 described the use of nuclear energy for both bombs and peaceful applications. (His novel The world Set Free). At approximately the same time many scientists thought this was impossible.
(Rutherford is on record for saying this publicly, that nuclear energy will be never used).

I think a famous example is the Monty Hall problem` https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem about switching doors.
The problem was answered correctly by Marilyn vos Savant, but she got
baskets of letters from experts that she is wrong.

Albert Einstein, patent clerk and John Stewart Bell, particle accelerator designer spring to mind as developing important theories while not employed professionally as scientists in the field they were working in. Similarly, many of the enlightenment scientists were gentleman hobbyists who looked down on professional scientists.

In 1726's Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift mocked the learned scientists of Britain for not having solved the Longitude problem: Figure out a way to keep track of one's east-west location to within a mile after making a round-trip across the Atlantic. This was one of the most important scientific challenges of the 18th century. The British Parliament had an outstanding offer of £ 20,000 for a solution, and had trusted the astronomers at the Royal Observatory with awarding the prize. The prize was worth several times the modern-day Nobel Prize, and was famous at the time.

In 1731, a watchmaker named John Harrison solved the problem. The astronomers at the Observatory refused to believe him. Over the next 40 years, Harrison steadily refined his solution, but the astronomers never did award him the prize. In 1741, hundreds of British sailors died because Harrison's solution was not released to the public. It took an act of Parliament in 1773 before Harrison was finally given his prize, and east-west navigation could be made safe.

Look at the writings of William Gibson. He invented terms and described conditions and approaches relating to the advancement of computer technology, and the way it impacts our culture. Some were original, some were pioneering but not strictly speaking his own.