The behavior of the scientists is in this case perfectly appropriate. This fellow Mitra is a deep-fried crackpot whose work is replete with errors of the most trivial kind.
Right off the bat this article hits us with: "He proved black holes couldn't exist because their formation and existence flouted Einstein's general theory of relativity." Never mind that Schwarzschild's paper was the first published solution of the Einstein field equations of general relativity. It was published in 1916, only a year after GR was published.
Later we are hit with: "Motivated by Mitra's work, American physicists Stanley Robertson and Darryl Leiter have confirmed in 2002 that BHCs have intense magnetic fields as predicted by Mitra and therefore are not real black holes which cannot have magnetic field." This sentence is ridiculous for a number of reasons, but it will suffice to point out that the Kerr-Newman solution to the Einstein Field Equations was published in 1965 (rotating, charged black holes must necessarily have intense magnetic fields).
There are plenty more howlers in this article, and if you follow the links AdmSmith posted, you'll see that Mitra's papers are veritable fountains of errors.
It is the shame of FreeRepublic that the rantings of crackpots are routinely posted in lieu of science, and accepted uncritically and to great applause by a certain segment of Freepers, who despite the pride they take in their ignorance of the topic, seem to have a politically motivated need for mainstream science and scientists to be discredited. It really reflects badly on all of us.
Hmm.... Looks like this article (or I) touched a nerve. So, are you saying that all of Mitra works should be discredited and he should be shunned by the scientific community?
Your outstanding and eloquent plea for reason reminds me why you are my second-favorite Freeper. (Radio Astronomer is my favorite. Sorry).
It really reflects badly on all of us.
The small but annoyingly loud number of pseudoscientists does no service to FR or conservatism in general, and only gives the Left further ammunition. And the person who winds up taking these shots is Jim Rob, who has done prehaps more than anyone to establish a strong and coherent conservative community on the Web. It is through no fault of his own that the pseudoscientists (as well as the homophobes, Muslim-bashers, and other fringe dwellers who masquerade as being part of mainstream conservatism) keep trying to sabotage things.