Question

Passage A
In the mid-nineteenth century, Ignaz Semmelweis demonstrated that implementing hand-washing protocols drastically reduced mortality rates in maternity wards. Yet, the medical establishment vehemently rejected his findings. This dismissal was not driven by a refutation of his statistical data, which was rigorous and clear. Rather, Semmelweis's contemporaries operated under the miasma theory—which attributed diseases to "bad air"—and could not conceive of invisible particles transmitting illness. Without a biologically plausible mechanism that fit the prevailing medical paradigm, the establishment found it easier to ignore the empirical success of Semmelweis's methods than to dismantle their foundational understanding of disease.

Passage B
When Alfred Wegener first proposed the theory of continental drift in 1912, he presented compelling evidence, including the jigsaw-puzzle fit of the continents and identical fossil records found on widely separated landmasses. Nevertheless, the geological community broadly ridiculed his hypothesis for decades. Geologists largely did not contest the fossil data itself. Instead, their opposition stemmed from Wegener's inability to provide a credible physical mechanism; he could not explain what monumental forces could possibly propel solid continents through the ocean floor. Until the later discovery of plate tectonics provided that missing mechanism, Wegener's empirical observations were treated as mere anomalies that lacked theoretical justification.

Based on the relationship between empirical evidence and theoretical acceptance described in both passages, which one of the following scenarios presents the most analogous situation?