It can go both ways. Special relativity was accepted pretty early on, in part because it fixed the “need” for luminiferous æther in our understanding of light, which was already on shaky ground after repeated attempts to identify its qualities failed. SR wasn’t without some controversy: in replacing its predecessor Galilean relativity it also broke Newton’s law of universal gravitation, though Einstein ended up replacing that with his General theory of relativity.
Sometimes new ideas fit neatly into holes left by surrounding ideas, and sometimes they require scientists to throw out some of those surrounding ideas. Nobody likes having to do the same job twice, and while scientists usually try to keep an open mind they may also hesitate to accept a new idea that undermines work they’ve already done. The Platonic ideal of “pure science” compares very poorly to the way science works in the real world, with competing agendas and personal allegiances.
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