Originally Posted by dgruss23

And that's what this board is supposed to be about - learning and testing what we think we know. People can be mainstream in one topic and ATM in another. And people can be undecided. It is counterproductive to demand that a person defend a certain position or remain quiet when the person might be genuinely undecided about the controversial idea.

That's why IMO the best approach is just to let the discussion unfold. Someone ought to be able to say: "This paper looks interesting. It seems to support alternative X. Any comments." Then someone who sees flaws in the paper can simply say: "The problems with this paper are A,B,and C."