The quantum gravity community alone has a whole plethora of competing, mutually contradicting theories even within subgroups like string theory. Well-known and respected physicists make their careers off of proposals like:

  - Two time dimensions [1]
  - Reality is actually a discrete, combinatorial graph [2]
  - We live in a Euclidean space virtual machine on a 
    general relativistic virtual machine on a Euclidean actual machine [3]
  - Reality is a souped up version of liquid helium, 
    and of course dark energy is just surface tension [4]

I took a bit of license with these descriptions, but when this stuff doesn't get you written off as a crackpot (as long as you've got an actually theory going on and can explain it to others), what will?

[1]: http://physics.usc.edu/~bars/twoTph.htm [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_quantum_gravity [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfluid_vacuum_theory

Outlandish but testable claims are treated well by the Physics community. Take the recent example of the EmDrive[1], which has gotten a few replication studies. Nothing conclusive yet, but it hasn't been dismissed out of hand by everyone.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive

Are you from the physics community? The EmDrive wasn't viewed well at all, it's viewed as completely baloney. None of the early experiments afaik was none with sufficient experimental rigor to reveal anything surprising. All this while making an absolutely huge claim. The average physicist (I'm not one) wouldn't want to waste any more time with it than with the 2nd-law-violating "free energy" claim of the week.

Getting replication experiments is "well" for a crackpot claim. Having the average physicist accept it would be a bit too much -- the point was that the claim was testable and thus not universally rejected.

You say they're treated well, but the EmDrive was specifically sponsored by NASA, which means you're not answering the same question as what I asked, but changing it by presupposing that I asked how such a person would be treated if they were already institutionally sponsored.

First, I can't possibly answer the question you asked, because you asked for the opinion of someone else. Second, if you had read into the second paragraph of the link, you would see that the EmDrive is not institutionally sponsored nor developed by NASA. Third, offering analogous evidence is not the same thing as changing the question.

Actually, it was institutionally sponsored, because the very work to peer review it was done by labs directly sponsored by NASA.

If the initial work were not peer reviewed, you would not be holding it up as an example of something successful.

Therefore, it's NASA's sponsorship of the peer review which is a necessary and direct cause of you calling it successful here.

So my initial assessment of what you said stands. You're saying the physics community is receptive because NASA sponsored an attempts to verify it. That proves nothing about the receptivity of the physics community nor of even NASA. But I don't expect this to be something you can easily agree with. After all, you're proving my point.

It isn't very clear what you think should happen here.

A fairly outlandish invention was developed outside the mainstream physics community. The community saw it and made the effort to test it. This is good, right?

If not, then what should happen?

> After all, you're proving my point.

Which is what exactly?

That you have gotten something really important really wrong which you are not yet able to be aware of.

Can you be more specific?

Of course I can. I have been. Now if you want to know something more specific, you need a more specific question which you can make by using things I've said.

EmDrive has not been "sponsored" by NASA. The researches at their Eagleworks labs built a prototype and tested it, but that's not quite the same thing.

Thanks for the backup. We lobsters gotta stick together!

Would we be here talking about the EmDrive as anything like a possible breakthrough which was well received if it were not for that NASA-sponsored work?

I think so. NASA has done relatively little with it so far.

It's not like they've given it their stamp of approval. Eagleworks is NASA, but as I understand it, they are on a pretty loose leash, and it's their business to investigate somewhat-crackpot ideas.