[Polybius]

There are scandals in science due to fraud and wishful thinking, just as there are in politics. If the pols cleaned up their messes a tenth as well as scientists do, we'd be a lot better off.

Science is like FreeRepublic.

If somebody claims something that sounds fishy, there are dozens of people working frantically to be the first one to prove him wrong.

[PatrickHenry]

Science is like FreeRepublic. If somebody claims something that sounds fishy, there are dozens of people working frantically to be the first one to prove him wrong.

Yup. Science is really full of revolutionaries. There's nothing quite so invigorating, and good for the career, as demonstrating that some famous old coot was wrong. The cranks, however, with their whack-job "theories," are forever claiming that there's some "orthodox conspiracy" that won't let their wonderful new ideas get a fair hearing.

[RightWingAtheist]

Here's a good recent blog post by Lubos Motl on the difficulties of filtering out the crackpots in the Internet age.