I grew up with those things. A generation older than mine found it harder to go along with these discoveries. I guess the younger generation more or less take it for granted, although we've always had people in each generation who have been trying to disprove it, and some of them very good scientists. But in the last ten years, some ingenious experiments have verified the paradox. That is hard to say.
Surprises are part of the game.
I happen to live on both sides of that discovery. Now that concept had been proposed earlier by Wegner early in the century. However, the geologists of his day ran him out of court. Experiments prove, however, that both Wegner and Hess were right. It's an almost ideal example.