Apparently even at the time the kon-tiki expedition was largely regarded as racist pseudoscience. Heyerdahl made a simple raft when Austronesian people have sophisticated outrigger canoes and refused to accept the common knowledge of the day because he said they were "too primitive" to sail into the wind.

Edit: he also hypothesised colonisation by a white, blonde, blue-eyed people rather than. Y'know. Polynesians. Because he believed only white people could be capable of such a feat.