This argument has been had many times. It's easy to pervasively debunk flat eartherism, or anti-vax conspiracies. Yet those ideas continue to be pervasive in p

This argument has been had many times. It's easy to pervasively debunk flat eartherism, or anti-vax conspiracies. Yet those ideas continue to be pervasive in particular subpopulations. When people want to hold a view, out-sciencing them won't work. Ultimately > Will use a smidgeon of an expert's time and help a lot of people. Yes, if you have to spend all your time responding to cranks, you'll have no time to be productive, and you'll embolden the cranks. Bullshit is produce to spew than to refute, so trying to counter bullshit with intellectual honesty is a loosing proposition. At some point you have to set a bar for bullshit, and ignore anything below the bar. The bullshit-artists call that "censorship", because at that point they've lost and the only way they can continue to spew bullshit is to find popular support with contrarians or free-speech absolutists who don't actually have a deep knowledge or care about scientific discourse.