I just don't want to be in a position to constantly filter out stuff myself.
Me neither. But I do like to hear people describe the reasons why they have a different opinion to me. I often learn something, even though my current opinions are not swayed at all. Hearing the same opinions again and again is tedious, really, even if I were to agree: nothing to learn there.
It becomes easier when you realize that most people are wrong most of the time (and I include myself here, too).
I especially like it when people more intelligent than I (which is not that rare
) have a direct, critical, but friendly discussion about completely different opinions (which is kinda rare nowadays); when the participants are interested in the reasoning, and not interested in "gaining points". You know, civil, scientific or rational or philosophic discourse for the pleasure of it.
Just because someone has an odd opinion or two, doesn't matter much.
It depends. I personally would welcome smart people investigating UFOs. This is not offensive, it is actually great.
But if that physicist comes up with an opinion that women are inherently stupider than men and that's why you don't see them as much in science, I'd basically ignore any other opinions from that person.
I'd find it interesting to find out how they'd respond to their opinion being shown to be factually wrong.
(As an aside, nobody does science in full isolation, and how we interact with others
matters. Judging individuals based only on their membership in any group or tribe is just idiotic. Unless, of course, the membership is exhibited by their behaviour, because how we behave, interact with others, matters.)
To most of those that control the research purse strings, anything mentioning UFO or LENF causes a similar reaction as the above opinion does in you.
There are very, very few organizations with administrations that are not affected by that or something like that to at least some degree.
In Finland, the Academy of Finland funds research to the tune of 250,000,000 € plus every year, but they really, REALLY prefer to fund research that is already being done elsewhere, instead of completely new research. My guess is that they need to feel that they're at the very forefront of science, doing things that the big boys are doing. Go submit a research plan about UFO or LENF or gravity shielding, and they'll most certainly blacklist you forever, muttering something about Eugene Plodkletnov. Silly icky pink human stuff.