Scientific method does not reject hypotheses because bullies apply pejorative neologisms.
Last edited Mon Jan 6, 2014, 04:13 PM - Edit history (1)
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. . . Holmes argued the controversial view that physicians with unwashed hands were responsible for transmitting puerperal fever from patient to patient. Holmes was promptly attacked by the leading Philadelphia obstetrician, Charles D. Meigs, who derided his arguments as the “jejeune and fizzenless dreamings” of a sophomoric writer, and declared that any practitioner who met with epidemic cases of puerperal fever was simply “unlucky.”
A few years later, Semmelweis took up the struggle in Europe to persuade other physicians of the contagiousness of puerperal fever. Semmelweis completed his MD degree at the University of Vienna in 1844. In 1846, he was appointed assistant to Johannes Klein in the maternity clinic of the Vienna General Hospital. Semmelweis was puzzled to discover that the First Clinic of the Hospital had a much higher maternal mortality rate (10%) than the Second Clinic (less than 4%). The only difference he could find between the two clinics was that the first was used to train medical students whereas the second trained midwives. When his friend and colleague, Professor Jakob Kolletschka, died from septicemia from a finger injury acquired from a postmortem examination on a woman who had died of puerperal fever, Semmelweis concluded that he and his fellow physicians were carrying “cadaverous particles” from the autopsy rooms to the patients they examined in the First Clinic. The midwives, who were not involved in autopsies, had no such contact with corpses or “cadaverous particles.” Semmelweis began to insist that anyone attending autopsies scrub their hands in chloride of lime before entering the maternity wards. The maternal mortality rate immediately fell to that of the Second Clinic.
Semmelweis soon became the focus of a fierce power struggle within the Vienna medical faculty as his work became the subject of a bitter dispute among European obstetricians. His arguments ran contrary to the disease theories of the time, that infections were due to “miasmas” or “bad air,” or to the balance of humors within a patient's body. In 1861, Semmelweis published Die Ätiologie, der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers [The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever]. When his book was either ignored or ridiculed, Semmelweis began to denounce prominent European obstetricians as irresponsible murderers. He became depressed and started drinking; his public behavior became irritating and embarrassing to his professional colleagues and to his family. In 1865 he was deceived into entering an insane asylum and when he tried to escape, he was severely beaten by guards. A gangrenous wound to his hand, probably caused by the beating, led to his untimely death two weeks later.
Thanks to the work of Holmes and Semmelweis, the gradual acceptance of sterile procedures, and to a variety of other factors such as improved environmental conditions, better overall obstetrical care, and the availability of antibiotics, puerperal fever has become rare in developed countries. . .
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866610/
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) and Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818–1865): Preventing the Transmission of Puerperal Fever
Thankfully, Holmes & Semmelweis did not allow the derision & pejorative attacks of the establishment to prevent them from the objective pursuit of truth.
"Like many people you think that Medics are bastions of rationality."
On what statement of mine did you base that conclusion?
Because I stated propositions should be judged on substantive basis and not rejected because of a pejorative label?
Because I responded to your request for an example with an example in which the medical establishment used derisive smears an ad hominem attacks to bully those who correctly challenged the medical orthodoxy?
agree 100%.
(and, while we are at it, would not it make sense for those disagreeing with a non-establishment proposition to base arguments on the substance, or lack of substance, of the proposition, rather than resorting to pejorative labeling?
But I do make exceptions for creationists, and young earthers. 
TBH, a lot of what you see comes having made the same argument over and over again. I've been actively involved in battling creationists, and I can tell you that after a while you realize that people who believe that are not really interested in what science actually shows, but with justifying their own emotionally held position.
I find the same to be true of many "alternate" beliefs, but not all. I try to be careful in such cases. My use of "teh Woo" in my previous post was a bit of tongue-in-cheek response to the current dust-up. I've never used the term before.
As advocates of the scientific method, I think it's important we remain open to genuine hypotheses, not matter how ridiculous they might seem, but with the caveat that extraordinary claims generally require extra-ordinary evidences. So many people require respect for their point of view or "hypothesis" when it's not actually a hypothesis, but an untestable claim, or for which they don't intend to provide evidence. As my wife is fond of telling me, academic (or scientific) enquiry means entertainng many ideas. But not all ideas are equally good!
In short, I think the pejoratives come from a position of frustration with sloppy thinking, and sometimes that frustration splashes onto those with legitimate alternative ideas worth investigating.
...rather than by attempting to smear those with whom one disagrees with pejorative labeling.
