Jerry,

Bashing astrophysics and the epistemological shortcomings of science in general is not going to convince anyone that your alternative to the mainstream theory of how our Universe works/has evolved is better than the rest. And if you are not on a quest to convince people on this forum of various things, then what are you doing? By the way, what is your alternative, as you have not, at least to my knowledge, rigorously developed it mathematically and defended it in a manner not unlike a PHD thesis? Indeed, this is exactly what you would need to do before anyone begins to take you seriously outside of this forum. Alternative gravity models such as Berkenstein's relativistic MOND are getting more and more attention lately largely because Berkenstein did exactly what I said above. And don't play it like you don't have a vested interest in the promotion of your own astronomy ideas and you are just a modern day Socrates-- I am pretty sure you know as well as I do that such a position would be quite disingenuous.

In accordance with thermodynamics, it is easier to criticize others in life than it is to do the hard work developing something that is truly unique and potentially far-reaching yourself; it is easier to break eggs on "mischief night" than it is to take the time to provide sustenance and care for some chickens so they can continue to lay eggs. It is also commonly known that people who are unsatisfied with the state of their fields/occupations and the lack of progress in their lines of work to launch attacks on others' fields which at least appear to be progressing. As you said yourself, science is not an exclusively rational enterprise, we can only pretend to sever science from the humanities. Our life experiences, successes and failures, and even personalities, figure into the equation (no pun intended). Your field is rocket science; unfortunately, rocket science is a stagnant field-- we are still using the same basic chemical rocket technology that we used at the beginning of the space age. So, while those "bandwagon-jumping sheep-like" astronomers have been innovating, developing new detectors and telescopes, making significant progress ruling out many ideas about how our Universe works, rocket scientists have been utterly unsuccessful in applying ideas based on well-established physics, let alone ATM ideas to help transport some of us off this planet before an extinction event(s)! At least the astronomers have been hard at work innovating/creating (rather than spending huge chunks of their time criticizing rocket scientists) thereby enabling a search for new homes, as the discovery of extrasolar planets is about as clear-cut a case of how science has progressed as you can get.