There are of also cases where a societal benefit outweighed new knowledge about biology. Spontaneous generation meant that it's ok to kill lice on the Sabbath and eat fish with worms in it (which nearly all fish do) so long as the worms are of the kind that hatch within the fish. Well lice don't spontaneously generate and the worm in question lives outside the fish, but are you really gonna tell people to not kill lice any day of the week and totally get rid of part of their diet? It's a fun bit of tradition I think.
