On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Levi Pearson <[email protected]> wrote: > Crackpots aren't marginalized and dismissed because > they attack the status quo. They're marginalized because they're > wrong, or at least their arguments are flawed to the point of being > inadmissible to serious consideration.
Yes, there *are* actual crackpots according to your definition. But, didn't we just discuss that often people are dismissed regardless of being correct simply because they contradicted the status quo of the then-current conventional wisdom? Eg Copernicus/Galileo. There are *also* people that present very cogent arguments against commonly accepted ideas in science. Miles' arguments against string theory satisfy that IMO. Lumping them in with crackpots to discount them off-hand is a weak way to avoid their otherwise-solid arguments. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
