Deep thoughts and silliness

Free speech is a fun problem. If we believe in it, then we have to accept that people will sometimes write or say something we think is not just wrong, but that we find offensive.
To what extent is there free speech in the science literature? Obviously there are some limits: we are restricted by the subject matter, of course. And there is also some limit on quality: one of the jobs of peer reviewers is to say when a submission fails in rigour. But there is also a grey area, where the subject is deemed not important enough, or just too wacky (i.e. it’s suggesting ideas very different from what we currently think). The latter sort of paper presents a conundrum: many way-out ideas are flat-out wrong, but a few could actually be right and paradigm-changing, even if this is not apparent. Should we not give these views an airing too?

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