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He was notoriously bad about reporting his findings to other scientists, and many of his other defenses were flat our wrong(his argument based on the tides for example).

There wasn't much of an established practice of publication and peer review back in those days. Most often, people like Galileo just corresponded with like-minded people. Or sometimes published books. As for the tides, yes, he was off a bit there, but that's not what got him convicted for heresy. A few links, for those who may be interested:

The Crime of Galileo: Indictment and Abjuration of 1633. The heresy confession.
Trial of Galileo Galilei in 1633.
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany. Galileo's opinion about science/scripture conflicts.
Ichneumon's excellent presentation of the issues. FreeRepublic post #31.

Thanks PH for your excellent links in post #221....as always, you have provided some excellent reference material..

I especially enjoyed Ichneumons post about Galileo, and was especially touched at many of Galileos thoughts, this one being most excellent...."I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

This quote of Galileos, spoken so long ago, is as fresh, and relevant today, as it was in his day...

Thanks to Darwin Central...

I can't get your links to work.

There wasn't much of an established practice of publication and peer review back in those days. Most often, people like Galileo just corresponded with like-minded people.

Is that why he shunned Kepler, who tried his utmost to get a good correspondence with him?

As for the tides, yes, he was off a bit there, but that's not what got him convicted for heresy.

Correct, he told theologians that the interpretation of scripture was wrong. He showed that Venus revolved around the sun, and that moons orbited around Jupiter, but that still did not prove that the Earth moved around the sun, though it definately made a pretty decent point about the possibility. The Church was already moving to a point of reinterpreting even before Galileo, but they refused to be bullied into the all-or-nothing demends of Galileo.

Essentially, the Church's stance since Aquinas wrote on it was to keep the current interpretation of scripture unless overwhelming evidence said the interpretation was incorrect. Galileo did not have enormous evidence, he was just trying to replace one horribly bulky system for another,and ignored Kepler's very elegant model completely. He was tried for heresy for trying to be a theologian and reinterpreting scripture based on evidence that he simply did not have.

There are many heroic people in the history of science, but that man is not one of them.