I love this. Whenever I think of the microbiome I think of the two obscure gents from Western Australia who thought they were seeing H. pylori bacteria in the stomachs of ulcer and stomach cancer patients. This is where skepticism and critical thinking can sometimes end up being a form of science denial, because it took 23 years of fighting the skeptics to prove that 90% of ulcers came from the bacteria and not the stress and excess stomach acid we thought.
In the end, they won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2005 and revolutionized the treatment of ulcers, which shows what a diff these bugs can make.