In my haste to state that I disagreed with your assessment of the relative merits evolutionism and creationism, I forgot to mention that I agreed with your general premise and with your specific example with Lucy.
This kind of row is very common in scientific circles and it's pretty typical that the new guys claim they are debunking traditionalists, and that traditionalists claim the new guys' opinions are absurd.
Relativity was derided as jew physics, Copernican theory a heresy, continental drift an absurdity. It seems there's a lot of nasty behavior in legitimate science. That something is wrong does not make it unscientific, nor that it is right that it is.
OTOH, I recall reading somewhere (I don't recall the source) in which two nazi scientists were talking and agreed that even if Einstein was wrong, that he was still one of the greatest mathematicians of the century.
Further, when Einstein expressed incredulity at some conclusions from quantum mechanics, I think it was Dirac who asked Schroedinger whether perhaps Einstein just didn't understand the theory. Schroedinger's response was that he felt there were perhaps a dozen people in the world who understood it and that he was sure Einstein was one of them. (I'm not sure where I read this one either.) My point is that even when there is extreme disagreement between some scientists, they nevertheless acknowledge that their opponent is somehow on the same level as they are.
Maybe one thing that really separates one who is perceived a crackpot from one who is perceived eccentric, but possibly brilliant, is the extent to which he appears to demonstrate that he actually understands the problem space.
k
