The attributes "old" and "established" do not describe the accuracy of a thing.
Humans believed that the earth was flat for thousands of years in various cultures - old, established, and wrong.
The geocentric model of the cosmos prevailed for about fourteen centuries until the emergence of heliocentric theories - old, established, and again, wrong.
To be clear, I'm not arguing one way or the other about the accuracy of the hypothesis you mentioned, but simply that the age and popularity of any hypothesis has little to do with whether or not it will eventually be disproven.
Humans believed that the earth was flat for thousands of years in various cultures - old, established, and wrong.
The geocentric model of the cosmos prevailed for about fourteen centuries until the emergence of heliocentric theories - old, established, and again, wrong.
To be clear, I'm not arguing one way or the other about the accuracy of the hypothesis you mentioned, but simply that the age and popularity of any hypothesis has little to do with whether or not it will eventually be disproven.