It appears you, like me, disagree with twblalock's broad statement "Science is better served when such papers are published, and then are debunked using scientific standards of inquiry." and have the position more like "only good arguments warrant publication".

I'm perfectly fine with that latter viewpoint and don't see where we have any disagreement.

Perhaps, although I see people claim the latter when it seems they are more rejecting a position or conclusion merely because they already disagree with it, or are worried about implications of the argument.

It's hard to know what you mean without a concrete example.

twblalock's argument appears to be that editors are obligated to publish all pseudoscience dreck in order to refute it.

Now, there are plenty of pseudoscientific beliefs which are widely held, but are clearly not backed by evidence.

Consider Hollow Earth theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth - which is outright untenable; there is no evidence in favor of it and plenty of evidence against it.

Why should I worry about implications of a Hollow Earth when there are so many other more interesting things to worry about?

Going back to pjc50's comment, I am convinced by the evidence that 'bell curve arguments about some races being less intellectually capable than others' are bunkum. To start with, the genetic evidence over the last decades shows that the human-constructed concept we call "race" has no real biological basis. (Racial classifications is another pseudoscience. I linked to a video with more discussion about the flaws in the Bell Curve book.)

The evidence is so overwhelming that, like the evidence against YEC or Hollow Earth theory, it's not worth my time to engage in the topic, much less worth my time to develop the specific rhetorical skills to engage charlatans, frauds, grifters, and true-believers at their game.

There are certainly some who do that, and I commend them for fighting the good fight. But when a YEC proponent presents a tired argument like "If Human Beings Evolved From Monkeys Then Why Are There Still Monkeys?" or "Evolution Is Only A Theory" for the n-th million-th time - I don't have the patience. And neither do science journal editors, who use their freedom of association to decide to not publish a given paper.

I'll now focus on the word "censorship". You must be aware that supporters of pseudoscientific beliefs have all manner of ways to publish their works, hold meetings, get on TV shows, build museums, and more. So by "censor" you are not meaning censorship in any of its usual senses.

I think you mean something more like "there's an obligation to let the honorable opposition speak, in order that truth may ring out." But a YEC isn't there for the scientific truth but rather wants to be treated as honorable (even though it isn't!) in order to influence policy goals in favor of a certain religious viewpoint. I believe by jumping right to "censorship" instead of starting with "maybe it doesn't actually have merit", you end up supporting bad science.

I think there exist objective standards of good argumentation, and any viewpoint that makes an honest attempt to abide by said standards should get a fair hearing, despite what people may think about the conclusion and consequences. Much of today's status quo exists precisely due to that liberty, so for the status quo to turn around and deny it to others they dislike is extremely hypocritical.

As a concrete example, let's stick with YEC. There are very successful scientists with credentials from top institutions that believe the evidence supports the YEC position. They argue for YEC not for religious reasons, but for honest intellectual reasons. It is worth giving such arguments a fair hearing, regardless of whether they are flawed.

"They argue for YEC not for religious reasons, but for honest intellectual reasons."

Who? And what are their arguments?

And how have their arguments not been given a fair hearing and found lacking? (See http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html for a list of common creationist arguments and their rebuttal.)

That's what I mean by a concrete example.

John Sanford is one I know of. He is inventor of the gene gun and his work on population genetics convinced him that the genome must be devolving, something he called genetic entropy. This led him to reject atheism and adopt YEC.

As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Sanford notes:

> This idea is unsupported by available evidence. In laboratory experiments, viruses saturated with mutations do not go extinct.[10] Sanford also misuses Kimura's mutation distribution; Kimura excludes beneficial mutations because they would have too large an effect, not an insignificant one.[11] Sanford has refused to acknowledge this problem, even after being directly confronted with Kimura's own words.[12] Further, Sanford's assertion that there are virtually no selectable beneficial mutations is contradicted by examples of exactly that, such as lactase persistence in humans,[13] or tetherin antagonism in HIV-1 group M Vpu.[14]

To elaborate on my comment, per our original question whether there are respectable scientists who hold non status quo positions for scientific reasons, my example of Sanford as a YEC who holds the position for scientific reasons seems to still stand. It is not uncommon for scientists to disagree, so I am unsure what your quote is demonstrating regarding our original question.

Just to outline the discussion up till now, I maintain that even non status quo views should be given a hearing, if they proceed by well established criteria for good argumentation. You questioned whether any such people/arguments exist, and if so whether they are in fact being unduly censored. I offered the biological fine tuning paper and Sanford as ID and YEC (in turn) examples to support my claim there are well argued minority views held by otherwise highly intellectually respectable individuals that are currently being censored, unjustly in my opinion.

You wrote "honest intellectual reasons".

I pointed out that Sanford's reasons do not seem to fall into that category, in that they have been refuted, and he continues.

Once they are given a hearing, and found wanting, do they get another hearing? And another? And another?

How many hearings is enough before we say it's no longer an honest reason?

You answer seems to be "as many as they want, otherwise it's censorship."

It is really not clear to me from that wiki article you posted that Sanford's view has been refuted. I took a look at Kimura's paper, and it seems the wiki author either didn't read it or didn't understand Kimura's argument.

"Sanford also misuses Kimura's mutation distribution; Kimura excludes beneficial mutations because they would have too large an effect, not an insignificant one."

This makes it sound as if Sanford is excluding beneficial mutations because otherwise they would disprove his 'genetic entropy' thesis since they are very beneficial and outweigh the amassing of negative mutations.

However, from what I can understand of the original paper, Kimura actually excludes beneficial mutations from his model because they do not match the empirical data, and thus must be much less beneficial or common than his model requires. Here's the cite from his paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC383841/

From the abstract:

"The situation becomes quite different if slightly advantageous mutations occur at a constant rate independent of environmental conditions. In this case, the evolutionary rate can become enormously higher in a species with a very large population size than in a species with a small population size, contrary to the observed pattern of evolution at the molecular level."

From the beginning: "Note that in this formulation, we disregard beneficial mutants, and restrict our consideration only to deleterious and neutral mutations. Admittedly, this is an oversimplification, but as I shall show later, a model assuming that beneficial mutations also arise at a constant rate independent of environmental changes leads to unrealistic results."

And near the end of the article:

"To make our analysis complete, let us investigate how the evolutionary rate is influenced by assuming that a certain fraction of mutations are advantageous....This means the rate of evolution can become enormously high in very large populations, kg being directly proportional to Ne, contrary to actual observations."

Kimura is saying that beneficial mutations do not follow his model, because they must be much less common than his model requires, so he excludes beneficial mutations. This sounds to me consistent with what Sanford is saying, unless I am misunderstanding something. If you come to a different understanding of Kimura, please let me know.

At any rate, it is not intellectually dishonest for scholars to disagree. There is no requirement that scholars must agree with the status quo. In fact, that's anti thetical to the entire scientific project. Intellectual dishonesty consists of things like knowingly making logically fallacious arguments and falsifying evidence, none of which it is obvious, at least to me from the wiki article you posted, that Sanford is doing. So it is unclear to me why he should not be regarded as an intellectually honest YEC, and have his views respected as such. I am happy to be convinced otherwise.

So what do you conclude per our discussion?