[shadowfyr]

Several reasons. One is, strength in numbers doesn't mean a damn thing if 90% of the people in that mass think they are alone in the fight.

Two, there is a phrase, "herding cats". Loonies are either of one mind about the same ideas *or* of one mind about hating the rest of us. There is even on part of the definition for "Crank", given here:



which basically states, "One attribute of a crank is that it doesn't matter of other cranks have completely incompatible and even almost totally apposed ideas about how something works, just so long as *both* agree that the rational people are wrong." They will literally defend each others views as "good alternatives" to ours, right up until the moment we are no longer relevant and they have to turn on each other.

Finally, *we* are often bad at organizing, bad at getting out points across in ways *their* followers could understand or accept, and we have a sense of ethics that prevents us from using their biggest tactics - laying about what their opponents say, lying about what they actually know (as in insisting they have all the answers and us not having them is a "weakness", even if they can't actually provide any answers), and quoting quotes of quotes of other people's quotes, without ever risking things like... telling someone where the original quote came from, so they can check if it really says what they claim. We don't have the organizations, the tools, the lack of ethics or the obsessive certainty that we *must* be right. And we have spent decades hoping that their obvious insanity would eventually do away with them for us, while failing to notice that they have evolved their tactics, while we sat in our homes, labs, offices, etc. and said, "I don't have time to deal with this BS."

They *use* fear to control people and undermine their opponents, we use it to excuse ourselves from the risks associated with actually doing something about them. Its about time we use it to get angry. Its the only *ethical* way you can fight against an enemy that has most of the weapons, nearly all of the organization and too much of the power. The irrational way to deal with it is to hide, and hope that someone else does something about it, *or* result to their tactics, or worse, to force changes. And, its telling that many of them, when they come on science blogs to babble about how wrong everyone else is, claim we would use such inhuman and unethical tactics.

Seriously, how hard is it for them to get that beliefs die a far more long lasting death when ridiculed to death, than burned on a bonfire or locked up in some modern dungeon, for disagreeing with the established order. Jokes don't drive people to insane acts, but martyrs though do all the time, which only shows how irrational "forcing" people to conform, instead of just showing everyone how stupid they are acting, really is. But showing requires willingness to either take risks, or vocally support those that will take them.