Tomato effect
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The tomato effect occurs when effective therapies for a condition are rejected because they do not make sense in the context of the current understanding or theory of the disease in question.[1] The name refers to the fact that tomatoes were rejected as a food source by most North Americans until the end of the 19th century, because the prevailing belief at the time was that they were poisonous.[2][3]
A parallel concern is medical reversal, which is when new clinical information is based on new clinical trials or understanding of a disease, contradicting clinical practice. Medical reversal implies the original clinical practice failed to achieve success or had harms that outweighed benefits. That is contrasted with the phenomenon of replacement where a useful clinical practice is replaced by one that works better.[4]
