Fred Hoyle was on track to win the Noble prize for his work on stellar evolution when he suddenly began exhibiting questionable scientific judgement. It wasn't the positions he was taking so much as his justifications for supporting them, and I'm talking, of course, about his support for steady state theory in cosmology and his anti-evolution positions in biology.
I've read one biography of Hoyle, and it gave short shrift to his reasons and motivations for supporting these positions, other than to say that he was being true to his belief that one should follow the evidence wherever it leads. But whatever he was doing, it certainly couldn't be described as following the evidence. What was going on in his head? Does anyone know?
I've wondered this for a long time, and Hoot's raising of the issue of Hoyle's and Wickramasinghe's ideas about abiogenesis in another thread reminded me that I still don't have a satisfactory answer. Anyone come across any good explanations?
--Percy