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However, this analogy breaks down when you look at the historical period between George Lemaitre’s first proposal of the big-bang theory in 1927 and the scientific community’s widespread acceptance of the theory in 1965, when scientists empirically confirmed one of the big bang’s predictions.

How so? 1965-1927 is 38 years.

Gamow and Teller were both proponents of the expanding-universe theory that had been advanced by Friedmann, Edwin Hubble, and Georges LeMaître. Gamow, however, modified the theory and named his version the “big bang.” He and Ralph Alpher published this theory in a paper called “The Origin of Chemical Elements” (1948). This paper, attempting to explain the distribution of chemical elements throughout the universe, posits a primeval thermonuclear explosion, the big bang that began the universe. According to the theory, after the big bang, atomic nuclei were built up by the successive capture of neutrons by the initially formed pairs and triplets.

That is 21 years before the testable prediction was made followed by 17 years before the theory was widely accepted.(and I'm not sure how close that initial description is to the current theories synthesis of elements)

http://cosmos.colorado.edu/stem/courses/common/documents/chapter12/l12S7.htm

But, in 1950, a Japanese astrophysicist, Chushiro Hayashi, pointed out a big flaw in Gamow's theory. One of Gamow's basic assumptions, that the universe was originally filled with neutrons and gamma rays, could not be correct. If the radiation had a temperature of 10⁹ K when the universe was 20 minutes old, it would have to be much hotter when the universe was much younger, say 1 second A.B.E. But if the radiation is hotter than 10¹⁰ K, the gamma rays will be sufficiently energetic to produce electrons and positrons (anti-electrons) by the reaction:

"Darwin's Black Box" was written in 1996.