Warp wrote:

>   You see, that's very typical pseudoscientist talk: Basically, there's
> a world-wide conspiracy between scientists to have only one true theory of
> everything, and any alternative theories are shut down and ridiculed for
> the sole reason that they are incompatible with the one true theory.
> Scientists are very closed-minded and are not willing to even consider
> alternative theories.
> 
>   Of course pseudoscientists like to talk like this because it gives them
> more credibility. They want to give the layman the impression that the
> "scientific community" consists of old farts who are fixated into one
> single old theory, have a strong resistance to change and are not even
> willing to consider or study alternatives. The pseudoscientist wants to
> give an impression of himself as being an innovator, someone who thinks
> out of the box, who is not stagnated by historical (and often untrue)
> theories, and that he is fighting the good fight against the "scientific
> community" who is ridiculing him and shutting him down.
> 
>   But naturally this is just a bunch of lies, and has nothing to do with
> reality.

Well... there *have* been scientific theories which were considered 
ridiculous for a long time, which eventually turned out to be correct. 
And in some branches of science, there isn't a whole heap of evidence to 
go on, and so opinion starts to dominate over evidence and hence you do 
get scientists who are kind of set-on a particular theory and don't want 
to look at other theories.

On the other hand, this is the exception rather than the norm. Sometimes 
there is a certain reluctance to accept a new theory, but science didn't 
get where it is today by ignoring available evidence. Any true scientist 
would at least consider the possibility that another theory is right 
given hard evidence to support it.

>   The scientific community consists of thousands and thousands of different
> people from around the world.
> 
>   And most of them are certainly innovators and open-minded, who are very
> ready to consider and study alternatives. Nothing would reward a scientist
> more than being able to publish a paper about a brand new hypothesis or
> even theory, which other scientists could study, measure and test, and
> as a result of this could be considered scientifically sound.

Indeed. This is what scientists live for. (Not to mention getting paid 
for...)

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