I've recently found that a significant change in my diet, staying away from heavy and processed foods like breads and oils, seems to have resulted in not actually needing very much sleep, if any at all. Assuming my assessment is correct, I could see similar revelations resulting in people losing faith entirely in the basic blueprint for living which we were taught, and getting themselves seriously hurt by attempting different things which they don't understand well enough to actually make work.
People love to copy others who they perceive as being more successful than they are, yet they very rarely put any serious effort into understanding what they're copying.