> If it's backed up by evidence, if it's a useful way of thinking that leads to lots of interesting new research, it's not going to be particularly controversial.
You mean like a lot of things in psychology or social "science"?
Even there been Nobel prices for the underlying physics this stuff form the link above goes mostly in the same ballpark as flat-earth stuff. (I'm not a "believer" but I came across this stuff looking at pictures of loaded plasma and cosmological "dark mater" filaments that look bizarrely similar).
Actually even in math they have "controversies", not everybody "believes" in the same stuff, for example like constructivism or its opposite.
So I see some space for a journal which would publish science that nobody else likes to publish because it's not mainstream enough.
You mean the research area that slowly gained interest, was intensely studied for decades, and now is slowly losing interest as it fails to acquire experimental evidence and the new avenues for research based on it dry up? Are you mad that people spent so much time on it for so long or that they're now moving on to other ideas?
> Even there been Nobel prices for the underlying physics this stuff form the link above goes mostly in the same ballpark as flat-earth stuff.
I am familiar with the works of Hannes Alfven (largely because I once tried to read a library in alphabetical order); I'll grudgingly admit that his ideas could be called "controversial" while also still being "interesting".
I think it's an interesting case-study into whether there is(/was) a problem with controversial theories in astrophysics.
1. Was Alfven "hurt" by his voicing of "controversial" but "legitimate" scientific theories? Did his career suffer?
2. For the theories he put forth that were ultimately accepted by the broader scientific community, what did the trajectory of the acceptance look like? Was it just a matter of "the older generation dying off"? Was their new evidence presented that tipped the scales? Was it the applicability of the theories and methodology to other problems?
3. For the theories he put forth that were ultimately not accepted, can we now fairly discard them as "interesting but wrong?"
Alfven is in the sweet spot of "long enough ago that we should be able to 'score' a lot of his work by now, but not so long ago to be muddied by time". It could be interesting to dig into in depth.
> Actually even in math they have "controversies", not everybody "believes" in the same stuff, for example like constructivism or its opposite.
I'm not going to claim there's never been a fist-fight between a constructionist and a non-constructionist, but the "disagreements" like constructivism are much more along the lines of "I find constructivist proofs and am curious how much of mathematics can be build constructively" versus "turns out the answer is 'not enough' and there are more interesting things to do anyway", not "YOUR METHODOLOGY IS HERETICAL AND YOU MUST BE DRESTROYED".
You mean like a lot of things in psychology or social "science"?
Or what about string theory in physics?
On the other hand side there are things like:
http://www.electricuniverseuk.eu/the-science/
Even there been Nobel prices for the underlying physics this stuff form the link above goes mostly in the same ballpark as flat-earth stuff. (I'm not a "believer" but I came across this stuff looking at pictures of loaded plasma and cosmological "dark mater" filaments that look bizarrely similar).
Actually even in math they have "controversies", not everybody "believes" in the same stuff, for example like constructivism or its opposite.
So I see some space for a journal which would publish science that nobody else likes to publish because it's not mainstream enough.