In my experience, if I do my homework and show it (e.g. links in the post), I can be not merely contrary but actually wrong, and still get awarded paperclips for effort. I presume this is a vote for "more like this", i.e. posts that put in effort.
Well, that, or the effort makes you look like you're right. You could be right and a vote is translated as, "Yes, more of this," but an alternative would be, "Wow, sources, looks smart and probably right."
Or, people just don't follow the links but upvote because they're passing by and there's links with attract attention and a click of the mouse.
(Not poo-pooing your effort, just suggesting alternative interpretations.)
My impression is that critiques of lesswrong mainstream positions and arguments for contrary positions are received well and achieve high karma scores when they are of very high quality. Similarly posts and comments that take lesswrong mainstream positions will still be voted down if they are of very low quality. But in between there seems to be a gulf: Moderately low quality mainstream comments will stay at 0 to -1 karma while contra-mainstream comments of (apparently) similar quality score solidly negative karma, moderately high quality mainstream comments achieve good positive karma while similar quality contra-mainstream comments stay at 0 to 2.
Do you share my impression? And if this is the case, should we try to do something about it?