The advancement of human knowledge has historically followed the pattern of one-step growth (the same pattern followed by microorganisms in laboratory culture conditions). In this way, each new important discovery opened the door to multiple secondary breakthroughs, eventually reaching a "plateau" when new findings emerged. Microbiology research has usually followed this pattern, but often the conclusions attained from experimentation/observation were either equivocal or altogether false, causing important delays in the advancement of this science. This mini-review deals with some of these documented scientific errors, but the aim is not to include every mistake, but to select those that are paramount to the advance of Microbiology.
Keywords: Influenza; Measles; Poliomyelitis; Rabies; Smalpox; Vaccine; Virus; Yellow fever.