[setBoolean]

1. Who decides what is a "fringe" theory? You? The Government? The scientific community? Facebook/Twitter etc...?

2. ..Fringe opinions should have to work harder to get to the mainstream... No they shouldn't it is you the reader of those news who should make the decision of how much "brain time" this "fringe" news get.

3. Denying airtime to certain topics doesn't make them go away or sways people that believe them otherwise.

[tonystubblebine]

Well, since you asked if I should decide what a fringe theory is, yes, sometimes I do make that decision. But when I'm wrong those things have a habit of breaking through. I remember being pretty skeptical of intermittent fasting for awhile. I'd held it out of a study we did in 2014 and then held it out of our publishing. Something about it smelled like anorexia light. So on the one hand I kept hearing people swear by it and then on the other hand I hadn't done enough research to be comfortable. I ended up having a detailed conversation with a doctor about the physiological side and then with a therapist about eating disorders (especially in men) before I was ready to allow it into our work. So for about a year I was wrongly gatekeeping on this topic. But that's what I mean about fringe ideas need to work harder. The fringes is where those ideas get stress tested and refined. And since ideas break out of the fringes all the time, I don't have any real fear that gatekeeping other places is overly oppressive.