There are numerous lessons that could be learned here.

1. Scientists are human beings and, hence, fallible. Presented with an idea this much at odds with current understanding, they resorted to ad hominem attacks.

2. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This was a big change to current understanding, and the initially proposed mechanisms simply did not work.

3. The process did eventually work. The evidence collected by Wegener remained in the record and when additional evidence (that helped explain the mechanism) was discovered, the opinion of the scientific community began to change.

While there have been "crackpot" ideas eventually proved correct, there have been many more that remained utterly unfounded. When presented with an idea that defies the current consensus, look at *why* it disagrees with the consensus and see what it would take for it to be correct.