Well, that goes more for the unsettled, like popular debates, upcoming new theories, and such. I always loved settled science i guess, for it being actually something to learn reliably from. I just had more 'neutral' attitude towards much of unsettled. I am glad about publication of neutrinos going at FTL though; that was cool thing they published it, rather than just hid it under the rug until they find the wiring problem; that creates bias otherwise.
Freeman Dyson writes in the New York Review of Books about people who took up the crackpot offer. Not just complete cranks, but eminent scientists such as Eddington who got into crankery in their later years.
New thing I learnt: Dyson was not only a good friend of Immanuel Velikovsky, but considers him a greatly underappreciated poet.