That is a fun page! Everybody should check that out.
I admit to being at least vaguely familiar with every question, but I am definitely not a physicist, nor a crank physicist, but I am friends with a physicist. So ..
Which cosmological theory is correct? Not being a cosmologist, I have to see if I can take a 50% chance and make it 95%, then I can do something. Of the number of experts on the planet in cosmology, there are vaster numbers of those who preach the standard model and gee-ar, since I am not a physicist, I can't judge the theories myself, that's hubris, all I can do is count. There are tons of physicists preaching the standard model and GR. There are, not that many preaching anything else. As interesting as minority reports are, unless they overwhelm, or merge together with the majority somehow, it's unlikely they're correct. But this is coming from someone who believes the Maker created the heavens and the earth within the past ten thousand years, with the appearance of age, so take it with a grain or two of salt.
Actually it's not. It's much closer to a valid appeal to authority.
No.
Doctors of philosophy in physics must display solid understanding of known physics, and then on top of that introduce new, peer-reviewed knowledge into the human knowledge base, so you're talking about apples and oranges here.
There have been two superstars of physics, Newton and Einstein. After these two, you might argue Planck wrt Quantum, but that's a stretch when compared with the other two men. Nobody else comes close to changing the way that physics is understood than Newton and Einstein. While they may have been seen as loners, outcasts, nuts, or cranks, by someone, at some time, I believe those were minority views, and certainly we don't hear too much about people thinking this nowadays.
They figured out things using science though, the scientific method. Those examples you've provided were not developed using science. It isn't a lesson in going against the grain, it's a lesson in using the scientific method.
It's irresponsible to say that it is not relevant. It's not proof positive, but it is not irrelevant.
Agreed, of course.
What contradiction?
Appeal to authority is a fallacy of logic just as much as an appeal to popularity would be. I'd agree that it could be considered either one. The point is exactly the same. The point is that who supports a position is not relevant to whether the position is valid. Something is true or false whether all the experts in the world agree or not. This fallacy is nothing but a direct application of the law of excluded middle - one of the fundamental laws of reason that allow you to think and understand and to know anything at all.
You should pay closer attention.
No, I'm not either. You're naive as can be if you believe otherwise.
Einstien wasn't taken seriously by hardly anyone. It's sheer luck that anyone has ever heard of him. One guy - one single guy - happen to read his paper and took it seriously enough to give it the light of day. It was on the strength of that one man's reputation that Einstein's physics career was revived. Otherwise, he'd have fallen into total obscurity and no one would know who he was - no one. Getting published is maybe 10% of the equation, having anyone take what you've published seriously is politics and luck. In science, as with virtually every other field of human endeavor, it's not as much what you know as it is who you know. If you think otherwise, you're sadly mistaken.
This is not relevant to the point. I have no problem with the scientific method. It's the scientists that are the problem. If only scientists would use the scientific method as consistently as they pretend.
So what? That isn't at all relevant to the point.
Do you have any evidence at all that the one is exclusive of the other? No!
You're flatly wrong! There's a really good reason why there are fallacies called "Appeal to Popularity" and "Appeal to Authority". These fallacies have been understood for longer than the English language has existed. I do not care how many people say that something is true (or false)! A billion people can ALL be wrong.
Excellent! There's hope!
Umm, well there's a lot of them. The latest one that has been presented that is relevant to the topic of this thread is the idea that two observers can disagree about the sequence of events and they can both be right.
People right now have devoted their entire careers to answering cosmological questions though; they're doing what you're doing, writ large. And a great majority of these people conclude the standard model and general relativity; they've done all the hard work that you're talking about, and this is what they've concluded.
In a field where there is no general consensus, the appeal to authority means next to nothing, and it is a fallacy to appeal to authority within such a field's purview. For example politics. Is the right or the left correct? How about authoritarianism vs. liberalism or libertarianism? You can't appeal to authority here, because the field of recognized experts in politics disagree sharply over the correct view. In fact in politics, the field is split about 1-to-1, but almost never more than 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 in narrow scopes (such as within a nation or a group of nations); this is just not enough agreement upon which to base an opinion, based upon an appeal to authority. There is no possibility of making a valid appeal to authority in such a case, so we're on our own in forming our political views.
Actually, most scientists believe in the standard model because they've been taught the standard model. The work they do is derived from, and the results they get are interpreted from within the context of the standard model and they do not tolerate any serious challenge to the standard model because their entire careers have been built upon that foundation and the rest of their careers, not to mention their entire worldview, depend on its continued acceptance.