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>someone who is doing actual research that doesn’t go with the grain of consensus

...gets marginalised. This has always been true in research. But now that we can all do research, of an OSINT sort, this is happening more.

Usually when amateur researchers try to engage with and/or question the consensus/professional researchers, they are met with silence. Even when they point out good evidence; that you might call "inconvenient truths".

I've worked in academia so I have sympathy; you get plenty of approaches from true crackpots [0]. Researchers/academics/professional need to learn to better engage with the amateurs, and those peers they marginalise, who genuinely try to contribute to the debate.

[0] https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html



> gets marginalised

or write a book (or books) or manufacture a miracoulous ointment "that bigfarma doesn't want you yo know about" and get rich appealing to those people that are or feel marginalized because they actually are border-line psycos or are members of a weaker segment of the population.

that has always been true in pseudoscience ("snake oil" comes from a real product of the 1800s) but now this is happening more.


Yeah, and that’s unfortunate. I do still think that’s a different problem to solve than what to do with conspiracy theorists, but I’m sure there’s some grey area there.




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