And these are the examples people bring up eeeeevery time they want to claim that we must listen to the cranks and the nutjobs! Think of all the amazing, important science we would be missing if we didn't!!!
But that's poor logic.
Those few instances are, by far, the exception. They're the ones you know about because they are so exceptional. But they are one in a million. Literally. Possibly even rarer.
And, frankly, your argument doesn't even hold up if they were more common. Because what's the common feature of those, that you yourself highlight? They were mocked. They were ignored. They were laughed at.
And yet, their ideas still caught on, because they were right. Only because they were right.
What this tells me is that, even if we do fully shut the cranks and the conspiracy theorists out of the scientific conversation, the one in a million (or hundred million) that actually find something real will get heard, because their ideas will prove to be right. They may not get credit for them—they might, instead, be credited to an actual scientist in the field who heard it two years later, from a friend of a friend of a friend with no clear attribution, tried it out, and found that it worked—but the truth will out.
I don't even know how to understand the latter part of your reply. I don't understand how you can argue that we should FULLY (and I take that word from you) shut out those who appear to be cranks because, through some magic, their argument will win out because it has some magical property that will make it heard despite the only one speaking it being gagged.
But that's poor logic.
Those few instances are, by far, the exception. They're the ones you know about because they are so exceptional. But they are one in a million. Literally. Possibly even rarer.
And, frankly, your argument doesn't even hold up if they were more common. Because what's the common feature of those, that you yourself highlight? They were mocked. They were ignored. They were laughed at.
And yet, their ideas still caught on, because they were right. Only because they were right.
What this tells me is that, even if we do fully shut the cranks and the conspiracy theorists out of the scientific conversation, the one in a million (or hundred million) that actually find something real will get heard, because their ideas will prove to be right. They may not get credit for them—they might, instead, be credited to an actual scientist in the field who heard it two years later, from a friend of a friend of a friend with no clear attribution, tried it out, and found that it worked—but the truth will out.