what is happening to 3I Atlas?

[Cyber]

I've often wondered what the intent or context is when such terms are used. Either to professionally disparage such persons, or to recognize them as being serious and dedicated persons to an area of science that has not been validated yet.

I think there is gatekeeping of knowledge going on. Scientists make money/living and a reputation from being "experts". So when the paradigm that is kind of their "turf" is open for debate, instead of curiosity and being open minded,. they fiercely defend the status quo under the guise of Occam's razor. It is also a conservative trait that resists ontological shock by forcing "rule based" dogma over chaos/unknown where free thinking and being open to new ideas is cast as dangerous and subversive.

 

[Cyber]

A nice summary so far.

 

[Hypnalis]

I think there is gatekeeping of knowledge going on. Scientists make money/living and a reputation from being "experts". So when the paradigm that is kind of their "turf" is open for debate, instead of curiosity and being open minded,. they fiercely defend the status quo under the guise of Occam's razor. It is also a conservative trait that resists ontological shock by forcing "rule based" dogma over chaos/unknown where free thinking and being open to new ideas is cast as dangerous and subversive.

"Pseudoscience" is real, in the sense that there are people who lack the necessary knowledge who make claims that get a lot of attention.

The famous 1989 "Cold Fusion" claims made by two electrochemists are an example. They were real scientists, but the wrong kind for such claims.
Relevant because they were making claims based on measurements that were at the very edge (or just beyond) the accuracy of their measuring equipment.

This is what's happening with 3I/Atlas. We can't "see" it well enough to make most of the wilder claims.
The claims (even Loeb's) would be fun if they were handled better, but that's not what's happening, because the correct conservative approach doesn't get the same level of "clicks and attention".

On the other hand ....
The approach you and @Judge describe is also real.

I'm very skeptical about Beatriz Villarroel, but also of some of the criticisms repeated in the Wikipedia article, which IMO are consistent with the comments made by by you and Judge - "knee-jerk" denials based on supposition.
(There were some good criticisms too, and it's even possible the bad ones were misquotes - but the article as it stands includes some questionable stuff).

FWIW, here (from Wikiedia) is why I'm highly skeptical of Villarroel:

At this time, Villarroel—faced with what she characterized as bullying and harassment within the mainstream astronomical community—said that she decided to fully embark on "UFO research" and "destigmatizing the UFO topic".

This approach has caused enormous harm to the "soft sciences" and to society as a whole.

 

[Hypnalis]

A nice summary so far.

My favorite quote from the comments of this video:
At this point, an alien invasion would actually be a rescue mission.

Loeb is either being misquoted by the presenter, or is deliberately lying.

The presenter is being very economical with the truth.

Here's another example of his "work"

 

[Cyber]

The famous 1989 "Cold Fusion" claims made by two electrochemists are an example. They were real scientists, but the wrong kind for such claims.
Relevant because they were making claims based on measurements that were at the very edge (or just beyond) the accuracy of their measuring equipment.

Cold fusion failed because the results could not be reproduced. However I would classify this as low hanging fruit. A lot of other research can't be reproduced
Replication crisis - Wikipedia
Yet none of these other scientists are called pseudoscientists. why? because they back each other up. Loeb specifically picked on String theory as an example or Seti attracting billions of dollars of funding without yielding tangible results where the researchers don't seem to be held accountable to the same extent as Loeb himself or the few investigators who want to look at UAPs.

 

[Cyber]

At this time, Villarroel—faced with what she characterized as bullying and harassment within the mainstream astronomical community—said that she decided to fully embark on "UFO research" and "destigmatizing the UFO topic"

this is what I said is wrong. Scientific "groups" should be open to new ideas instead of bullying and ostracising investigators who they are threatened by.

 

[Hypnalis]

@Cyber

Cold Fusion never existed. The effect was actually zero, but they got "false positive" errors by treating the measurement equipment as being more sensitive than it actually was.
I included it because the "not enough pixels" issue I mentioned above regarding some of the images related to 3I/Atlas is similar in nature.

An interesting astronomical example of a similar mistake was the Italian guy who thought he saw "canals/channels" on Mars in 1877. He used quite low quality optical gear by modern standards and the canali were optical illusions.
Giovanni Schiaparelli - Wikipedia

The Replication Crisis in the "soft sciences" seems to be mostly scientific fraud, but not the kind that counts as pseudoscience.
Faking data to demonstrate your preferred result is relatively easy in the soft sciences - and nobody gets a promotion or tenure by disproving their interesting hypotheses.
Except they didn't do that very well either - most of them aren't even competent enough to create fake data that can't be identified via statistical analysis /lol.

It looks like Villaroel got upset when she received justified criticism, and decided to go all-in on UFO research.
So it was a very modern approach: fail, blame the people identifying your errors, claim victimhood, and double-down on the mistake.

I still think her latest results are worth verifying (by revisiting the original plates) though. It's not impossible for good results to be achieved for the wrong reasons.

 

[Cyber]

Fair enough, you make good points. the best way to answer criticism is more evidence.