Halton Arp: A Modern Day Galileo
Halton Arp is to the 21st century what Galileo was to the 17th. Both were respected scientists, popular leaders in their field. Both made observations which contradicted the accepted theories. Seventeenth century academics felt threatened by Galileo's observations and so, backed by ecclesiastical authority, they ordered him to stop looking. Twentieth century astronomers felt threatened by Arp's observations and so, backed by institutional authority, they ordered him to stop looking.
Both refused. Both published works geared to the non-specialist when specialists would no longer take note. Galileo's paper, "A Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World" , favored a heliocentric model of the solar system and undermined the accepted geocentric model. Arp's books, Quasars, Redshifts and Controversies, Seeing Red, and Catalogue of Discordant Redshift Associations, favor a steady-state model of the universe and undermine the accepted big bang model.
The Church responded by placing Galileo under house arrest: his peers would not even look through his telescope and the Church judged his books heretical. The modern astronomical community responded similarly to Arp. Observatory officials cancelled his telescope time and astronomical journals refused to publish his research...