Velikovsky was a dolt.
No he wasn't. He was a very serious, sober, and intelligent medical doctor willing to look at things from a perspective outside that of the the academic institutions. most scientific establishments are designed to exclude new ideas (that is what they are SUPPOSED to do), and Velikovsky's ideas were just too far fetched, but he was a pioneer in trying to tie together information from very different fields...
His research was non-the-less very thorough and his ideas were worth considering.
Albert Einstein was a big fan -- one of Velikovsky's books was next to his bedside when Einstein died -- but he did not necessarily "believe" what Velikovsky suggested, but was willing to entertain the possibility to see where it took things if true. this is the way one should approach supposedly wild-arse theories: sometimes they will be shown to be true and open up science to the NEXT level.
what Velikovsky was to his era, Rupert Sheldrake is to our own...