Round 3! It's on!

@Websinthe, I initially thought you were being too accomodating, but that last line completed the manouevre perfectly. Epic win.

Interesting that Sam D used the word "Crank". Consider the following titbit, which may be close to what we're seeing here, if not an exact 1:1 mapping:

"Accusation: "You haven't published in a real peer-reviewed journal"
Response: Either say "Peer review is just an old-boys network for peon scientists to pat each other on the back", or accuse journal editors of persecuting you. Compare yourself to Galileo."

From: The Crank HOWTO at Denialism blog
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/05/crank_h...

I've been noticing a bit of this kind of behaviour lately

I think you were entirely reasonable - It's Clive's response I worry about. Either he's too busy to actually read these things, or he's being flat-out dismissive of counter-opinion

> false religion

tautology is tautologous, redundant and says the same thing more than once.

Well, at least we haven't had Naomi Robson turn up in a firefighters uniform yet.

That this is the reality of politics doesn't make it any easier to swallow. There's been some appalingly bad treatment out there of which I'd cite Catch A Fire Ministries as the horribly ironic pinnacle