[8bitsrule]

> Its a bit outrageous to claim he's Galileo and the rest of the community is the Church

He's not just talking about physics... he's also talking about archeo and geo and anthro and paleo, etc. ... and there's FAR too much evidence - across the board, and going back 150 years (the list would take up this whole page) - to demonstrate that rocking the orthodox can be dangerous to your career.

Say what you will about Oumama, Avi's very very right on this one. And of course it works to the detriment of science. Everytime evidence disappears, or is re-interpreted to defend the faith - and the pseudoscience sword is thrown - we all lose. How many babies died before Ignaz Semmelweis died in an insane asylum?

[canjobear]

You are only considering the cases where deviations from orthodoxy turned out to be correct. My guess would be that the vast majority of deviations have turned out to be wrong, like cold fusion, and we don't think about those because they haven't been turned into parables.