Cheerio.
That the claim went to court doesnât somehow make it not be a conspiracy theory?
I have to disagree. At least some of those people really were proposing ideas that were considered very much on the fringe, mocked severely, and ran counter to âmainstreamâ views at the time.
Iâd hate to make this into a No True Scotsman or semantics-gument, because if those examples donât count then what is it we should consider a âfringeâ view? I get that making a novel, unexpected discovery that intially meets resistance(most novel ideas do) is not automatically the same as producing a veritable paradigm shift against the mainstream, but I do think the people @Gilbert listed and their discoveries, and how they eventually overtuned established views, are good candidates for that having actually occurred.
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I do too; Wegener and Marshall were the exsmples of fringe idea proposers proven correct that I immediately thought of.
But they proved themselves right through hard work and experimental data, not by whining about censorship and suing those who wouldnât publish their ideas.
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To borrow from Ron Sewellâs recent post, Iâd consider fringe in the modern day things like young-earth creationism, flat earth, the alien constructor hypothesis for the origin of pyramids, the memory water has of substances it once came into contact with. Or, maybe these are well outside the fringes, really, as they were never particularly viable hypotheses to begin with. Perhaps, if we want to give the fringe a less cartoonishly bad example, there are still researchers of more pedigree than none, who insist that birds are not dinosaurs, a position that could have been tenable at some point well before their time, but is within them held for no remaining scientific reason.
I would put things like âCOVID was leaked out of a lab, and the they are presumably hiding evidence of that and/or manufacturing independently reproducible evidence to the contraryâ well alongside these examples. What would have been historical equivalents, I might have some curiosity to learn about, but considering the steady progression of science towards ever more successful models of natural phenomena, I donât think anything, no matter how controversial it was seen at the time, would at all compare to the sort of fringe that is wholly incorrigible, entirely unresponsive to evidence or to critique.
Yes, most discoveries in science met with resistance. As anyone who published anything knows, every development in science meets with resistance, even when presented upfront with all the data needed to support it, and entirely consistent with the established mainstream. And, granted, some ideas would be more controversial than others, and eventually come to be accepted, because, as Roy is pointing out, those pushing them forward put the work in to convince their peers. Still, as Roy is continuing, this discussion of a âfringe that turned out to be correct in the endâ is not without context. We are talking about the lab-leak-ers. If what we are calling fringe is that sort of thing, the way that is presented to the scientific community and the way those who present that are dealing with scrutiny, then, no, I cannot think of any examples of something quite like that eventually ending up vindicated at the mainstreamâs expense, not in an environment we could even at our most charitable recognize as scientific.
What ruling? There hasnât bern a ruling in that case yet.
Unless you mean the preliminary ruling to withdraw the restrictions plaved on the government by lower courts - but that goes against the GBD authors.
Did any of them quit doing science in favor of rhetoric, as all of your heroes have? Or did they change the mainstream view by producing new data?
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You should have a look at paragraphs A and B (p16 to 23) of the us court of appeals for the fifth circuit regarding Missouri vs Biden. According to the court, the individual plaintiffs have demonstrated ongoing harm from their past censorship as well as a substantial risk of future harm, they have established an injury-in-fact sufficient to support their request for injunctive relief. Not only that, but the court also agreed that the the censorship was largely attributable to the governmentâs actions.
AFAICT, thatâs not according to the court, thatâs according to the case filing. As such, it is the contention of the applicants, is not the judgement of the court, and may not even be true.
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Thatâs quite a misrepresentation, Gil. Where did you get the idea that this was according to the court and not a filing with the court?
Ah, the 5th Circuit. Ok.