2014 Edge Q, what scientific concept to retire?

Edge's question for 2014 is What scientific idea is ready for retirement?
176 contributors allegedly offered 174 responses.

We skim them so you don't have to, unless of course you'd like to (update: see this Long Now blogpost for some one-line synopses.).   Here's a Readers Digest smorgasbord of interesting ones, though with no friendly indexing this year.

2013 Edge Q: a small change would yield a huge improvement

Bummer.

This year's question for Edge's World Question Series is quite fine:

What *Should* We Be Worried About?

But, just like last year, the outcome is needlessly disappointing: the answers are long-winded, making the endeavor one that's writer-friendly in the short term, but not reader-friendly, thus not writer-friendly in the long term, if the writer wants to be read.

Links to questions from 2010 and earlier

The sidebar to Edge's "Annual Question" page offers these links:

The 2012 "favorite explanation" question's answers needed editing

This year the answers to the Edge.org annual Question ( 2012 : What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation? )  were long and, to someone who's developed an internet attention span, tedious.

Suggestion: Edge should direct its great thinkers(tm) to submit their answer in a web form that has a hard limit on text length.

Another advantage to using such a form would be that you could also send out a more general invitation, so that self-selectors could also offer answers; then a volunteer or staffer could pick out gems from among this pool of responses.

2011 - What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?

Edge World Question Center 2011:
What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?
(Condensed from the original version)

164+ Contributors