> Even if you did suspect something was wrong you were careful because science said otherwise.… And so the only one loudly saying this was bunk where the right wing crackpots (the reasonable people on the right side were much quieter about it because they don't like to argue with science even though it went against their bias) - the right wing crackpots were on this only because the left wing embraced it as a science that confirmed their bias.
If “crackpots” turn out to be right when “reasonable people” and “science” were wrong—and this is far from the only instance of this happening—maybe we should reevaluate some things.
Just because a peer reviewed paper published in a prestigious journal says something doesn’t mean it’s true. Even a survey of multiple peer reviewed papers published over time isn’t necessarily determinative if there are common methodological issues or publishing biases. Yes, a lot of times actual crackpots will make stupid criticisms, but not every criticism is stupid even if it comes from outside the ivory tower.
In particular, whether or not a big rock falls faster than a small rock [1] is a fairly basic question in physics, which has one of the most certain answers. Virtually nothing in psychology, let alone human social psychology, is at that level of certainty, and any psychologist worth their salt will agree with that. Basically any finding in psychology should have a level of certainty somewhere between “yeah, that’s probably mostly true” and “hmm, interesting hypothesis that’s not entirely crazy, I wonder if it holds up”.
[1] Also, the literal question of whether a big rock or a small rock falls faster is trickier than you might assume if you only know the middle school version of the question. If we’re doing this on the moon, so as to dispose with the tricky aerodynamic questions, and we are answering the question from the frame of reference of an astronaut standing on the surface of the moon, the bigger rock actually does fall faster. Both rocks accelerate towards the center of the moon at the same rate, yes, but gravity works both ways. Both rocks pull on the moon but the bigger rock pulls harder, resulting in an extremely small torque on the lunar surface, drawing the side of the moon closer to it very slightly upwards. Which, from the surface frame of reference, is equivalent to the bigger rock falling faster.
