I find that blog post characteristic of what's wrong with academia. Lisi's obviously not a nutjob, and obviously not an idiot, and he's treated with contempt for proposing a big idea that might be wrong; might even be spectacularly wrong. Academia as a whole would usually rather see people get back in line and go on solving irrelevant problems. I found it encouraging that in the originally linked article that he at least did find some people in the scientific community that would treat him with a modicum of respect even if it was just in taking the time to explain why his theory doesn't fit the bill.

There are "big ideas" which look interesting and fresh for a general public, but they are boring and plain wrong for any professional in the field.

I'm sure you can find such things in your area of expertise.

All that glisters is not gold.

Sure, but boring and correct isn't a whole lot more interesting, and academia seems to produce a seemingly endless stream of such in my field of expertise. Many of the breakthroughs would have seemed naïve prior to having become dominant. Incidentally, some of my most productive research while in college was sparked by reading a paper that was patently wrong, but off-kilter enough to get me to look into some previously unexplored corners for new models.

Oh. That made perfect sense. Can you summarize?

From the link: "the overlap between the set of people who know some group theory and those who are (still) interested in giving Lisi’s “Theory of Everything” a passing thought is empty."

From the article, Lee Smolin (http://www.leesmolin.com/) has already put out a paper building on Lisi's approach.

Lisi replies to the article too...