Well they weren't talken at all seriously to start with. Everyone thought the idea of bacteria surviving the acid was completely rediculous. It was nearly 10 years before people started getting combination antibiotics to treat H. Pylori, and in that time Glaxo got seriously rich selling drugs that masked the symptoms but don't offer a cure (H2 blocklers like Zantac). And thousands if not millions died in that time because they where at best being managed rather than cured. All because journals like Science and Nature refused to publish what they considered to be nonsense results that didn't fit their pictures of things. Yet these guys has firm and clear results. There have even been alegations that the pharma's - Glaxo in particular - helped encourage the silence for financial reasons. Of course none of that has been proven and may be wild speculation - though the pharmas have been known to play dirty on these things before.

The Nobel Prize is well deserved in this case, but its not the best one for you to use in that way Pete. Marshall was so fed up by everyone laughing at his claims, that he even drank a solution of H Pylori and gave himself an ulcer. And this is after other labs had verified his experimental results. That was all by 1986. It was 9 years after all that before people started getting the treatment.