> Just look at how much legitimate research has been done on the field of neurofeedback since the 1970's. There was some legitimate research that went on, and some concrete results were produced, but then all of the New Age hippy freaks latched on to the concept as a new way of expanding their horizons... and now scientists won't touch neurofeedback with a 10-foot pole.

You've picked a field of study I know nothing about, but I wonder how accurate your summary of the matter is. For instance, crackpots pretend to work in a large variety of legitimate study (e.g. the development of new energy sources) and it doesn't completely discredit those fields. The idea that a promising field is hijacked by crackpots seems suspect. And the fact that there are a number of crackpots working at respected schools with grant money (consider John Mack, a psychologist at Harvard who for years studied alien abductions to the embarrasment of his colleagues) says to me that things are not necessarily as bleak as they seem.

This uncertainty is a problem as a layman. Without actually being a specialist in a given discipline, I sort of have to take the general consensus of scientists. It means that there may well be areas that seem crackpot but are not.

At the same time, as I said in my first post in this thread, I am skeptical of anyone who claims his field is being supressed. Consider some of the "scientists" who make this claim:

* Astrologers
* Parapsychologists
* Alternative healers (magnet therapists, acupuncturists, reflexologists, chakra realigners, the list is endless)
* Intelligent design researchers
* Chiropracters who claim chiropractic is useful for things aside from making your back feel better (I have seen some who insist that moving around discs in the back will cure cancer)
* Alchemists (yes, they still exist)
* Perpetual motion machine inventers (them too)
* UFOlogists
* Cerealogists (they study crop circles)
* Guys building time machines/free energy devices/transporters/other Star Trek things in their garages

Into that illustrious list we can add some people who may well be doing actual science. But from the outside it's very, very tough to tell who's who. All of those groups have "journals" that look quite professional and use a lot of technical jargon. Is their work being suppressed?

> it does make one wonder: what other areas do scientists intentionally ignore?

I would just like to point out the difference between scientists choosing not to investigate a field and actively shunning those who do, which is the claim that started all of this. Of course scientists are selective in what they study and it does lead to gaps in our knowledge. It's not really an easily solvable problem, though, since we're not going to force people (except grad students, maybe) to do research they don't think is promising.

> And - here's one final point to ponder: Are you (the reader of this post) open-minded to the possibility that the scientific community is not completely objective? In other words, are you willing to consider evidence contrary to your own opinion, or are you emotionally attached to the idea that the scientific community is completely objective?
>
> - Enigma

Yes. But what kind of evidence would you present? I cannot possibly imagine a study that would determine whether scientists are close-minded; the best I imagine you could offer are antecdotes.

Also note that nobody said the scientific community is completely objective. But that's not the same as the idea that it actively shuns those who research a field it doesn't like.

Stephen