Nobody likes a bully, and the FBI is acting like one
This is the natural logical conclusion of years of special interest lobbying and subsequent legislation that has put a lockdown on anything copyrighted.
Copyright went from a civil infraction to a criminal federal crime. Meaning maybe they'll send some kids to jail. Or maybe some teachers.
I hate to see it, but in a way I hope that they will make arrests here. Then that will turn the spotlight on the real crime here: congressional whoring for corporate interests (Disney RIAA MPAA) that has given us everlasting copyrights.
Only when the public at large becomes outraged will something be done about it.
This doesn't let the FBI off the hook either. The FBI has let the public down in more than one way in recent years.
Rummel has two primary tasks: to ensure that outbound spacecraft aren't contaminated with biological material from Earth....... Humans are biological material. So much for the manned mission to Mars
Not to mention all the crap that falls off everybody in our day to day existence.
And don't troll me with "speak for yourself", all humans shed skin cells and hair without knowing it. Not to mention what happens when you sneeze or cough. Or flu season etc. etc.
Doubt me still? Try cleaning your keyboard sometime or turn it upside down and shake it. It can truly be a revolting experience.
Even though we have been taking precautions about sending germs to mars, other coutries have not. Russia probably didn't give a care about their spacecraft they sent to Mars.
I invite you to think, though: what scientist would be willing to work under the "everyone gets to see my data at the same time as I do" plan you propose?
One that was hungry enough.
Seriously, I know that the ability to publish is very important to scientists, and to have initial exclusive access to the data is important. And for the vast majority of scientific research that is fine.
But when you have high profile, high cost experiment such as gravity probe B, I think that the integrity and transparancy of the experiment suffers if you limit access to the data, no matter how short this time may be.
The data will be released in a year. How is the public harmed by this delay?
If the entire raw data set is released, not much. But if data is "selectively edited" or adjustments made to the probe we don't know about, a whole lot.
The point I am making is that we do not know how they are controlling the experiment until it is over. So while I'm sure the scientists in charge have good intentions, experimental bias may come into play and prevent a later objective analysis.
I worked as a consultant for the company that was awarded the contract for working on the zerodur glass block that made up the housing for the gyros. They brought us in to try and teach machinists optical fabrication. The tolerances needed for this thing were unbelievable, extremely tough even for a master optician. They manufactured 3 housing blocks, one of them was destroyed during the rough machining process, and an optician trainee who was attempting to polish one of the precision lands with a weighted polishing lap by hand fractured the second. They trusted the same company with the second block to complete the polishing process. They had limited experience with any sort of optical fabrication, and the specs they were looking for were way, way beyond the capabilities of this shop. I felt really bad for the guy, who was absolutely sick with himself after the accident, and perturbed with Stanford University with giving the polishing operation to this shop with very little expertise in optical fabrication. This block had a million plus in material and man hours prior to the polishing operation, wiped out with one bad stroke
Heh. Stuff you don't hear about on NASA's website.
without the exclusivity period, you'll have a very hard time getting Principal Investigators to spend years of their lives dedicated to designing and building an instrument and flying it. (And that same exclusivity period applies to virtually all scientific endeavors, regardless of how funded BTW.)
I do not have an argument against the exclusivity period per se. Just that in certain instances it may serve the greater public good not to have it.
So much as finding Principal Investigators who will spend their lives dedicated to designing and building an instrument and flying it goes, science follows fundamental economic principles as much as anything else. It is a question of supply and demand, and economic motivation. Saying that science is outside of the sphere of "economic influence" is naive.
In other words, it is the golden rule. Whoever has the gold makes the rules. You have heard it before.
Believe what you will, reality remains the same regardless. It's not a simple as making a single gyro reading and comparing it to the theory
Or in other words, the public is not as good at "statistical massaging" that scientists may be. I would have to agree on that point.
You are right, they have an *idea*. What they don't have is solid data. They don't know precisely how the gravitational effects of the Sun and Moon will effect the readings. The don't know how galactic rotation will effect the readings. They don't know the precise effects of the precession of the orbit... It will take thousands of measurements across a span of months and years to get enough data to make the statistical analysis and to determine what are residual effects, what are dynamic effects, and what is an actual measurement of frame dragging.
Please, don't try to surround the experiment in a "scientific fog" to justify hiding the gyro data from the public. Frame dragging is predicted to be 42 milliarc-seconds/year.
I am quite sure that the scientists in charge of this project have the capability to know instantaneously how the actual gyro spin compares to this predicted value. And they should start to see a trend develope by three months.
The experiment will not take "years". The duration for this mission is sixteen months. The gyros are not going to be wildly thrown about by all the things you suggest, or they would not send the experiment up in the first place.
Sorry, I saw you plam that card and attempt to shift the claim from your original 'their are critics of Einstein's theories' to simply being a critique of frame dragging. Your arguement is based on false pretenses.
Plam?? oh, you meant "palm". The whole entire point of this thread and my parent post is that Einstein is placed on such a high pedestal that he has been placed beyond the reach of any scientific criticism, regardless as to its veracity and origin.
There is not one shred of evidence that Einstein wasn't right, and none of his critics have been able to supply a theory that both explains the measured and detected results.....
And in some instances there is not a shred evidence that he was right either. From this website;
Einstein forever altered our thinking about space, time and the Universe, but some of his most basic ideas remain untested and bafflingly at odds with the rest of modern physics.
So that is the whole point of doing the experiment in the first place. My contention is not the quality of any particular Einstein critic, but that to criticize Einstein is not acceptable by any member of the current scientific establishment.
Because of this I believe that there is distinct possibility for experimental bias affecting the results of this experiment in a manner that would promote Einstein theories rather than provide an objective analysis of the experimental evidence. Hence my suggestion that the data be published in realtime to promote scientifi
They also paid for it in investment of time and effort. Which, I think it's safe to say, you did not
They scientists are taxpayers. Meaning that they earned a salary from somewhere.
Their time and effort was paid for with a salary provided by public funding.
If a corporation hired the scientists, would the corporation not have the right to say how the scientists handled the data, when they would report it, and who to?
Why should it be any different for the public who hired the scientists?
but these people put a lot of time and effort into getting these projects to work
These scientists were "paid" to do their "research". Like anybody else, they get a salary from "somewhere".
If it was a private or commercial entity, they can do whatever whenever or whoever with their data.
But when it is the public that is paying their way, the public should also be the ones who get the benefit first, and the public should also decide how the data is handled.
Arguably, it is our elected officials in congress that is supposed to watch out for the public interest. But I don't think many trust them in this role any more.
The public owes scientists nothing.
It's not a question of demanding to see "pretty pictures".
But rather an acknowledgement of ultimately who should be in charge. And that would be whoever is forking over the money.
Pardon the pun, but this argument is more academic than anything.
I wonder what would happen if there was an organized public lobby against high-priced scientific experiments that are considered sacrosanct by the academic elite.
Therefore, for his extra work, he gets exclusive access to data for a year. For YOUR contribution, you get full access to the data, time-delayed.
No, it is not "extra work".
It was "his job" that he was "paid" to do.
So in reality, the taxpayer owes him nothing.
I'm sure that scientists could be found that would not have a problem in releasing realtime data to the public - or they would not get funding for their experiment.
And they spent years of their life working on it. You didn't. So get off your taxpayer high-horse and let them get on with the job they enjoy
$700 million can buy one very high horse. There is no doubt of that. I'm sure that they worked hard on the project. But they should not forget who paid their way.
It was the american public who paid taxes so they could have a nice ride on their gravy train of science.
Perhaps what I am suggesting is that they be mindful of that.
Maybe before approval of the next expensive scientific experiment is given, it could be made clear that realtime publication of experiment data would be a condition of funding. I wonder if that would change things?
What are you doing up so early in the morning besides posting to slashdot? Or haven't you gone to bed yet?
1) The scientific community is largely based on recognition of accomplishment. You may feel that the taxpayers should get the data, but you'd be acting in haste. You're paying the scientists salaries so that *they* can make important discoveries, not *you*.
I don't see how publishing the data realtime for this important experiment would hurt anybody except for maybe a few scientists who want to climb the scientific career totem pole. I'm sure that if there was enough concern about this, scientists could be found who were less "territorial," and wouldn't mind publishing a paper even though the data was made available realtime.
Considering that $700 million dollars of the public's money was spent on this thing, maybe a compromise could be made. Maybe they could find somebody like the late Carl Sagan to show up in six months and tell us whether the probe is finding frame dragging or not. They should be able to spot a trend by then.
It's easy to plot out mean values of raw data and compare them to theory. In that case, you're right. There are many, many people out there that would love to determine for themselves if they understand the mathematics of this experiment enough to analyze the data. However, The real experiment is determining to what extent their data can be 'trusted'. In order to do this, they must factor in the sensitivity of *every* piece of equipment used to collect any portion of the data, as well as all of the natural statistical errors that coincide with an experiment of this nature.
Yes and no. First, this satellite has been designed at great expense a thousand different ways of left and right to prevent noise. The builders have have even advertised that the space inside the gyros is going to be the quietest place anywhere, acoustically and electrically. It has been advertised as equivalent to being able to measure the width of a human hair at ten miles and frame dragging to an accuracy of 1%. That's their words, not mine.
If the probe is going to be that accurate, then it should be pretty obvious what forces are acting on the gyros (if there are any).
I would imagine that most of the data collected in experiments of this nature would look like noise to any scientist who did not also have (possibly classified) knowledge of the nature of the instruments being used to collect the data
This is my point. If the data from the probe looks like noise, and given the fact that it should easily detect frame dragging, what is there to be afraid of? Do they need to "statistically massage" the data to get the desired result? What are they protecting? Does the public need protecting from the natural phenonema of the universe? Are they using alien technology from area 51? Or maybe Einstein is right no matter what.
Maybe they spent that 700 million on keggers every saturday for fourty years and all they are sending up is some neat looking nickel plated ping pong balls. After all, it was a bunch of naked guys at the pool who invented it.
Admittedly I'm being difficult. And every scientist on the planet is going to be watching this thing anyway. It will be an understatement to say that it will be interesting to see what will happen.
Anyway, I never said mine was the majority opinion. You obviously have faith in the scientific profession as it currently stands. In many instances it works and it produces important and useful results.
But occasionally the method and the results leave something to be desired.
Several NPA members believe that the main benefit of criticizing and replacing special relativity may be--beyond even the likely development of new energy sources this will facilitate--the undermining of the relativism and subjectivism that have increasingly infused many areas of thought over the past century, since the iconoclastic amorality of Nietzsche. It will then become more difficult to support ethical relativism, and to argue that truth and values are not objective, absolute, eternal, and/or rationally based.
What they are saying is that science has been infected by the same moral relativism as the society at large in which it exists. Instead of ideas being scientifically rigorous and testable by anybody, you have science that is politically expedient. There is no such thing as "objective truth" that might be known, but only a paradigm which scientists view the world. In other words, science is a "subjective experience."
The redshift stuff did look a bit hokey to me too. But I also know that if for some reason the transmission of light was not constant across the vast distances of the universe, that it would/could throw all of the cherished cosmological theories (like that of an expanding universe) down the drain.
There are two things that we know about but yet their effect on light is not known. Over great distances, if these two things were to affect light in even the most infinitesimal way, all of the cosmological theories would have to be rewritten.
Those two things are dark energy and dark matter.
P.S. In my experience, whining about how alternative theorists are ostracized is a dead giveaway of a crackpot.
Like all those people who whined that Galileo was ostracized?
Real scientists know that all theories are honestly criticized,
So what makes a "real scientist?" Is it the the fact that they are pursuing scientific knowledge in a scientific manner, or do they need to be "the right people."
Real scientists know that all theories are honestly criticized, and they can point to the literature in which alternatives have been proposed.
I do not think that all theories are honestly criticized. One prime example of this is String Theory
In an ideal world, your statement would be true. But scientific endeavor is fraught with the same problems that are caused by human failings as much as anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
Comparing the FBI cracking down on copyright violation to Nazi's rounding up Jews is about as lame as it gets
Unless the copyright law being enforced is like a Nazi law.
Nobody likes a bully, and the FBI is acting like one
This is the natural logical conclusion of years of special interest lobbying and subsequent legislation that has put a lockdown on anything copyrighted.
Copyright went from a civil infraction to a criminal federal crime. Meaning maybe they'll send some kids to jail. Or maybe some teachers.
I hate to see it, but in a way I hope that they will make arrests here. Then that will turn the spotlight on the real crime here: congressional whoring for corporate interests (Disney RIAA MPAA) that has given us everlasting copyrights.
Only when the public at large becomes outraged will something be done about it.
This doesn't let the FBI off the hook either. The FBI has let the public down in more than one way in recent years.
They dont need us anymore!
Remember the quote from Red Green "If women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."
So as long as we are handy with the duct tape, and can kill the occasional bug, I'd say we have a fighting chance.
Unless you are nerd.....
Magnetic tape: $1.75
Linear Particle Accelerator at a major university: $2,300,000,000
Picosecond access to your pr0n: Priceless.
For everything else, there's Mastercard.
Rummel has two primary tasks: to ensure that outbound spacecraft aren't contaminated with biological material from Earth ....... Humans are biological material. So much for the manned mission to Mars
Not to mention all the crap that falls off everybody in our day to day existence.
And don't troll me with "speak for yourself", all humans shed skin cells and hair without knowing it. Not to mention what happens when you sneeze or cough. Or flu season etc. etc.
Doubt me still? Try cleaning your keyboard sometime or turn it upside down and shake it. It can truly be a revolting experience.
Even though we have been taking precautions about sending germs to mars, other coutries have not. Russia probably didn't give a care about their spacecraft they sent to Mars.
No, but Invasion of the Body Snatchers comes to mind.
It's interesting from the perspective that when the fungus comes to earth it is already too late to do anything about it.
I haven't seen the latest version though.
Not having a friend who is a girl.
I invite you to think, though: what scientist would be willing to work under the "everyone gets to see my data at the same time as I do" plan you propose?
One that was hungry enough.
Seriously, I know that the ability to publish is very important to scientists, and to have initial exclusive access to the data is important. And for the vast majority of scientific research that is fine.
But when you have high profile, high cost experiment such as gravity probe B, I think that the integrity and transparancy of the experiment suffers if you limit access to the data, no matter how short this time may be.
The data will be released in a year. How is the public harmed by this delay?
If the entire raw data set is released, not much. But if data is "selectively edited" or adjustments made to the probe we don't know about, a whole lot.
The point I am making is that we do not know how they are controlling the experiment until it is over. So while I'm sure the scientists in charge have good intentions, experimental bias may come into play and prevent a later objective analysis.
Will there be enough to buy some hotpockets and a can of diet coke?
From this link;
I worked as a consultant for the company that was awarded the contract for working on the zerodur glass block that made up the housing for the gyros. They brought us in to try and teach machinists optical fabrication. The tolerances needed for this thing were unbelievable, extremely tough even for a master optician. They manufactured 3 housing blocks, one of them was destroyed during the rough machining process, and an optician trainee who was attempting to polish one of the precision lands with a weighted polishing lap by hand fractured the second. They trusted the same company with the second block to complete the polishing process. They had limited experience with any sort of optical fabrication, and the specs they were looking for were way, way beyond the capabilities of this shop. I felt really bad for the guy, who was absolutely sick with himself after the accident, and perturbed with Stanford University with giving the polishing operation to this shop with very little expertise in optical fabrication. This block had a million plus in material and man hours prior to the polishing operation, wiped out with one bad stroke
Heh. Stuff you don't hear about on NASA's website.
could this post be considered a relatively first post?
No, relatively speaking you are a frost pist.
without the exclusivity period, you'll have a very hard time getting Principal Investigators to spend years of their lives dedicated to designing and building an instrument and flying it. (And that same exclusivity period applies to virtually all scientific endeavors, regardless of how funded BTW.)
I do not have an argument against the exclusivity period per se. Just that in certain instances it may serve the greater public good not to have it.
So much as finding Principal Investigators who will spend their lives dedicated to designing and building an instrument and flying it goes, science follows fundamental economic principles as much as anything else. It is a question of supply and demand, and economic motivation. Saying that science is outside of the sphere of "economic influence" is naive.
In other words, it is the golden rule. Whoever has the gold makes the rules. You have heard it before.
Believe what you will, reality remains the same regardless. It's not a simple as making a single gyro reading and comparing it to the theory
Or in other words, the public is not as good at "statistical massaging" that scientists may be. I would have to agree on that point.
You are right, they have an *idea*. What they don't have is solid data. They don't know precisely how the gravitational effects of the Sun and Moon will effect the readings. The don't know how galactic rotation will effect the readings. They don't know the precise effects of the precession of the orbit... It will take thousands of measurements across a span of months and years to get enough data to make the statistical analysis and to determine what are residual effects, what are dynamic effects, and what is an actual measurement of frame dragging.
Please, don't try to surround the experiment in a "scientific fog" to justify hiding the gyro data from the public. Frame dragging is predicted to be 42 milliarc-seconds/year.
I am quite sure that the scientists in charge of this project have the capability to know instantaneously how the actual gyro spin compares to this predicted value. And they should start to see a trend develope by three months.
The experiment will not take "years". The duration for this mission is sixteen months. The gyros are not going to be wildly thrown about by all the things you suggest, or they would not send the experiment up in the first place.
Sorry, I saw you plam that card and attempt to shift the claim from your original 'their are critics of Einstein's theories' to simply being a critique of frame dragging. Your arguement is based on false pretenses.
Plam?? oh, you meant "palm". The whole entire point of this thread and my parent post is that Einstein is placed on such a high pedestal that he has been placed beyond the reach of any scientific criticism, regardless as to its veracity and origin.
There is not one shred of evidence that Einstein wasn't right, and none of his critics have been able to supply a theory that both explains the measured and detected results.....
And in some instances there is not a shred evidence that he was right either. From this website;
Einstein forever altered our thinking about space, time and the Universe, but some of his most basic ideas remain untested and bafflingly at odds with the rest of modern physics.
So that is the whole point of doing the experiment in the first place. My contention is not the quality of any particular Einstein critic, but that to criticize Einstein is not acceptable by any member of the current scientific establishment.
Because of this I believe that there is distinct possibility for experimental bias affecting the results of this experiment in a manner that would promote Einstein theories rather than provide an objective analysis of the experimental evidence. Hence my suggestion that the data be published in realtime to promote scientifi
A Pic microcontroller would be my choice. They have ram onboard.
Or, most scientists would work for private firms for more money, and there would be NOTHING released
Whatever the market will bear.
If most scientists could get more money by working for private firms, they would already.
Of course, you could always ssl all of your connections.
How about VPNs? -- shut them out entirely.
They also paid for it in investment of time and effort. Which, I think it's safe to say, you did not
They scientists are taxpayers. Meaning that they earned a salary from somewhere.
Their time and effort was paid for with a salary provided by public funding.
If a corporation hired the scientists, would the corporation not have the right to say how the scientists handled the data, when they would report it, and who to?
Why should it be any different for the public who hired the scientists?
but these people put a lot of time and effort into getting these projects to work
These scientists were "paid" to do their "research". Like anybody else, they get a salary from "somewhere".
If it was a private or commercial entity, they can do whatever whenever or whoever with their data.
But when it is the public that is paying their way, the public should also be the ones who get the benefit first, and the public should also decide how the data is handled.
Arguably, it is our elected officials in congress that is supposed to watch out for the public interest. But I don't think many trust them in this role any more.
The public owes scientists nothing.
It's not a question of demanding to see "pretty pictures".
But rather an acknowledgement of ultimately who should be in charge. And that would be whoever is forking over the money.
Pardon the pun, but this argument is more academic than anything.
I wonder what would happen if there was an organized public lobby against high-priced scientific experiments that are considered sacrosanct by the academic elite.
Therefore, for his extra work, he gets exclusive access to data for a year. For YOUR contribution, you get full access to the data, time-delayed.
No, it is not "extra work".
It was "his job" that he was "paid" to do.
So in reality, the taxpayer owes him nothing.
I'm sure that scientists could be found that would not have a problem in releasing realtime data to the public - or they would not get funding for their experiment.
Another Triumph the Insult Comic Dog quote to a "Nerd of the Rings";
"Seriously, have you ever talked to a woman without having to give your credit card number."
And they spent years of their life working on it. You didn't. So get off your taxpayer high-horse and let them get on with the job they enjoy
$700 million can buy one very high horse. There is no doubt of that. I'm sure that they worked hard on the project. But they should not forget who paid their way.
It was the american public who paid taxes so they could have a nice ride on their gravy train of science.
Perhaps what I am suggesting is that they be mindful of that.
Maybe before approval of the next expensive scientific experiment is given, it could be made clear that realtime publication of experiment data would be a condition of funding. I wonder if that would change things?
What are you doing up so early in the morning besides posting to slashdot? Or haven't you gone to bed yet?
1) The scientific community is largely based on recognition of accomplishment. You may feel that the taxpayers should get the data, but you'd be acting in haste. You're paying the scientists salaries so that *they* can make important discoveries, not *you*.
I don't see how publishing the data realtime for this important experiment would hurt anybody except for maybe a few scientists who want to climb the scientific career totem pole. I'm sure that if there was enough concern about this, scientists could be found who were less "territorial," and wouldn't mind publishing a paper even though the data was made available realtime.
Considering that $700 million dollars of the public's money was spent on this thing, maybe a compromise could be made. Maybe they could find somebody like the late Carl Sagan to show up in six months and tell us whether the probe is finding frame dragging or not. They should be able to spot a trend by then.
It's easy to plot out mean values of raw data and compare them to theory. In that case, you're right. There are many, many people out there that would love to determine for themselves if they understand the mathematics of this experiment enough to analyze the data. However, The real experiment is determining to what extent their data can be 'trusted'. In order to do this, they must factor in the sensitivity of *every* piece of equipment used to collect any portion of the data, as well as all of the natural statistical errors that coincide with an experiment of this nature.
Yes and no. First, this satellite has been designed at great expense a thousand different ways of left and right to prevent noise. The builders have have even advertised that the space inside the gyros is going to be the quietest place anywhere, acoustically and electrically. It has been advertised as equivalent to being able to measure the width of a human hair at ten miles and frame dragging to an accuracy of 1%. That's their words, not mine.
If the probe is going to be that accurate, then it should be pretty obvious what forces are acting on the gyros (if there are any).
I would imagine that most of the data collected in experiments of this nature would look like noise to any scientist who did not also have (possibly classified) knowledge of the nature of the instruments being used to collect the data
This is my point. If the data from the probe looks like noise, and given the fact that it should easily detect frame dragging, what is there to be afraid of? Do they need to "statistically massage" the data to get the desired result? What are they protecting? Does the public need protecting from the natural phenonema of the universe? Are they using alien technology from area 51? Or maybe Einstein is right no matter what.
Maybe they spent that 700 million on keggers every saturday for fourty years and all they are sending up is some neat looking nickel plated ping pong balls. After all, it was a bunch of naked guys at the pool who invented it.
Admittedly I'm being difficult. And every scientist on the planet is going to be watching this thing anyway. It will be an understatement to say that it will be interesting to see what will happen.
Anyway, I never said mine was the majority opinion. You obviously have faith in the scientific profession as it currently stands. In many instances it works and it produces important and useful results.
But occasionally the method and the results leave something to be desired.
Yes, I am that desperate.
If you're that desperate, I think it's pretty safe to say that you are not going to get any chocolate either.
Congratulations on your first post.
You are hereby granted patent no. 7,152,654; "Expression for totally useless posting at the top of a comment thread."
While some of your slashdot friends may complain that there was prior art for this, you do not have to worry. It's our word against theirs.
We don't bother to research this stuff out anyway, and quite frankly we don't care.
Sincerely,
The US patent office.
This is the larger paragraph that you quote from:
Several NPA members believe that the main benefit of criticizing and replacing special relativity may be--beyond even the likely development of new energy sources this will facilitate--the undermining of the relativism and subjectivism that have increasingly infused many areas of thought over the past century, since the iconoclastic amorality of Nietzsche. It will then become more difficult to support ethical relativism, and to argue that truth and values are not objective, absolute, eternal, and/or rationally based.
What they are saying is that science has been infected by the same moral relativism as the society at large in which it exists. Instead of ideas being scientifically rigorous and testable by anybody, you have science that is politically expedient. There is no such thing as "objective truth" that might be known, but only a paradigm which scientists view the world. In other words, science is a "subjective experience."
One example of this would be the science of the bush administration. I also think that string theory is another example.
The redshift stuff did look a bit hokey to me too. But I also know that if for some reason the transmission of light was not constant across the vast distances of the universe, that it would/could throw all of the cherished cosmological theories (like that of an expanding universe) down the drain.
There are two things that we know about but yet their effect on light is not known. Over great distances, if these two things were to affect light in even the most infinitesimal way, all of the cosmological theories would have to be rewritten.
Those two things are dark energy and dark matter.
P.S. In my experience, whining about how alternative theorists are ostracized is a dead giveaway of a crackpot.
Like all those people who whined that Galileo was ostracized?
Real scientists know that all theories are honestly criticized,
So what makes a "real scientist?" Is it the the fact that they are pursuing scientific knowledge in a scientific manner, or do they need to be "the right people."
Real scientists know that all theories are honestly criticized, and they can point to the literature in which alternatives have been proposed.
I do not think that all theories are honestly criticized. One prime example of this is String Theory
In an ideal world, your statement would be true. But scientific endeavor is fraught with the same problems that are caused by human failings as much as anything else.