The sport was initially ridiculed as an effete, unmanly exhibition.

His call last spring to return the fund to health by substantially increasing the amount that banks pay in premiums was initially ridiculed by both regulators and lawmakers.

The show was initially ridiculed by many reviewers as the most abysmally lowbrow series in television history.

Initially ridiculed by her male colleagues, she quickly earned their respect and won passage, in December 1948, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Big Bang model was initially ridiculed by the scientific establishment.

Chladni was initially ridiculed for his claims of an outer space origin for meteorites, but his writings sparked scientific curiosity that eventually led more researchers to support his theory.

Adams was ridiculed initially for what many people considered a humiliating political comedown.

His claims about a gold cartel and market suppression were initially ridiculed as conspiracy theories and discounted.

Then, in the 1980s, two doctors who were initially ridiculed for proposing an outlandish theory proved that most ulcers are caused by bacteria and can be cured with antibiotics.

Catastrophic deglaciation flooding has also been suggested related to glacial Lake Missoula in the Northwestern United States and although initially ridiculed is now accepted as the prevailing view.