If you have a flawless and evidence supported compelling argument that is different from the prevalent theories or beliefs in a field, you cannot be successful in science within your life time. This would sound strange but is quite expected from the human behaviour perspective. There are also many examples from the past as well as in the present day science.
There is an old story where Darwin was wrong and someone showed that he was wrong with good amount of data and sound arguments. Well, Darwin was wrong on a number of issues. That does not undermine evolutionary theory. At times Darwin was wrong because biology was primitive that time. He was talking about inheritance without having any clue to the mechanisms of genetic inheritance. So he made certain assumptions which later turned out to be wrong. The theory of natural selection remains unaffected after correcting for the known mechanisms of inheritance and that’s what neo-Darwinism did eventually. But this knowledge came much after Darwin’s death.
Another issue where Darwin was wrong happened to be raised during his Lifetime. Darwin identified the value of sexual selection and wrote about it in his later book. For a long time, and even today evolutionary biologists often mix up issues. Sexual selection is often taken to be only females choosing males, invariably leading to sexual dimorphism in which males are larger and have developed extreme secondary sexual characters. In principle, there can be sexual selection without sexual dimorphism. Even if we assume that only females choose males for a given character, the character may be inherited by daughters equally. In fact, that is the default. For male specific characters they need to be on the sex chromosome or their expression needs to be hormonally regulated. This needs to evolve specifically and only certain contexts will facilitate sexual dimorphism. Otherwise sexually selected character should be seen in both the sexes by default. But the argument was being made under a total absence of the knowledge about the mechanisms of inheritance. It was also laden with the prevalent social prejudices. Darwin perhaps could not escape the prevalent paradigms completely. Although he was bold and courageous enough to contradict certain prevalent beliefs, he fell prey to certain others. So Darwin appears to believe and writes that in humans males are superior in strength, bravery, skills and intellect just like males in sexually dimorphic species.
A lady called Antoinette Brown Blackwell contradicted Darwin on these issues with an argument carefully prepared over four years. She used examples from biology showing that Darwin was wrong in certain matters. Today we know that sexual selection does not necessarily imply sexual dimorphism, and applying these arguments to humans needs to be done with great care. What strikes me the most about this story is not the details of these arguments, it is the fact that Darwin did not publish any reply to the criticism.
It’s not Darwin alone. This is in human behaviour. Perhaps there might be a few exceptions somewhere, but in general this is modal behaviour of scientists. Max Plank and Thomas Kuhn made this explicit. Evidence, sound logic, mathematics etc. is not enough to change the prevalent theories and opinions. Scientists are generally not convinced by science. The human nature dominates over the principles of science. If they come across a counter-argument, they take a look to see whether there are any obvious flaws in the argument that they can attack. If there are any, they attack it publicly irrespective of whether or not these issues were really central to the argument. Such a response is likely to lead to a debate. There is chance that truth might be established when there is a debate.
But if they do not find obvious flaws, what do they do? They just keep mum. A flawless argument never gets any reply. They neither admit the weakness of their side of the debate, nor do they try to rebut. They pretend that they never read the counter-argument. They behave as if it does not exist. The further course depends upon the status of the person who raised the counter-argument. If it comes from an elite, it will have at least some consequences. If from a non-elite the scientists know it quite well that if they keep mum, others will also do the same. The quality of the argument actually doesn’t mean anything to science. Who says it and where it is published matters.
Darwin was perhaps fortunate that so many people attacked his theory. That resulted in a debate because logic is more likely to prevail when there is an open debate. If those who opposed the theory of evolution were wise enough, they could have simply ignored Darwin’s book and then biology would have remained in dark ages for several more decades. But instead they criticized it heavily and that was fortunate for biology. The theory of evolution eventually became central to biological thinking.
Today’s scientists are smarter. They never entertain any debate. They only try to suppress the counter-argument, if any. In today’s science publishing system with confidential peer reviews and journal prestige era, it is just too easy to suppress the counter-argument. Platforms like PubPeer may have changed the picture only marginally at the most. Very few PubPeer comments receive a response from the authors or editors. Elite journals and authors from elite locations enjoy an impunity from cross questions, objections, counter-arguments and debates. All that they have to do is ignore them. But there is another side of the (highly biased) coin. For those who cross question, failure to get a response most likely means your argument is flawless. Authors have nothing to defend, they know that they are wrong and therefore the silence. They may enjoy impunity, but eventually history would remember their science as flawed, faulty and refuted. Just that whenever you see a serious flaw, it needs to be flagged with well articulated, logical and evidence based arguments. For a while, it may look like nobody takes any notice, but I am sure history will.
My science, My way 